The girl was white and
frightened, but the others were laughing and talking among themselves so
busily while they picked that they did not notice my abrupt arrival.
Some game, I understood, was in progress, but a game that had become too
serious for the happiness of the prisoner, for there was a fear in the
girl's eyes that was a very genuine fear indeed. I unfastened her at
once; the ropes were so loosely and clumsily knotted that they had not
hurt her skin; it was not that which made her pale. She collapsed a
moment upon the bench, then picked up her tiny skirts and dived away at
full speed into the safety of the stable-yard.
There was no response to my brief comforting, but she ran as though for
her life, and I divined that some horrid boys' cruelty had been afoot.
It was probably mere thoughtlessness, as cruelty with children usually
is, but something in me decided to discover exactly what it was.
And the boys, not one whit alarmed at my intervention, merely laughed
shyly when I explained that their prisoner had escaped, and told me
frankly what their "gime" had been. There was no vestige of shame in
them, nor any idea, of course, that they aped a monstrous reality.
That it was mere pretence was neither here nor there.
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