the habit of lying. After all, the medicine could not hurt him. His
nurse was at a little distance gazing absently at the sea. I sat down
on a bench, and dropped a few of the pellets into his palm. He ate
them seriously, and then turned around and backed--after the well-known
appealing fashion of childhood--against my knees. I understood the
movement--although it was unlike my idea of Johnnyboy. However, I
raised him to my lap--with the sensation of lifting a dozen lace-edged
handkerchiefs, and with very little more effort--where he sat silently
for a moment, with his sandals crossed pensively before him.

"Wouldn't you like to go and play with those children?" I asked,
pointing to a group of noisy sand levelers not far away.

"No!" After a pause, "You wouldn't neither."

"Why?"

"Hediks."

"But," I said, "perhaps if you went and played with them and ran up and
down as they do, you wouldn't have headache."

Johnnyboy did not answer for a moment; then there was a perceptible
gentle movement of his small frame. I confess I felt brutally like
Belcher. He was getting down.

Once down he faced me, lifted his frank eyes, said, "Do way and play
den," smoothed down his smuggler frock, and rejoined his nurse.

But although Johnnyboy afterwards forgave my moral defection, he did not