Chapter 4

Rea was wide awake now. She fixed her lovely blue eyes on Jusy's face with a look which made him ashamed. "Jusy," she said, "I can't help it if you are older than I am; I must say, I think you are cruel. You like to kill linnets; and now you won't be sorry for these poor old Indians, just because they are dirty and horrid-looking. You'd look just as bad yourself, if your skin was black, and you were a hundred years old, and hadn't got a penny in the world. You are real hard-hearted, Jusy, I do think you are!" and the tears came into Rea's eyes.

"What is all this?" said Uncle George, coming up the steps. "Not quarrelling, my little people!"

"Oh, no! no!" cried both the children eagerly.

"I never quarrel with Rea," added Jusy proudly. "I hope I am old enough to know better than that."

"I'm only two years the youngest," said Rea, in a mortified tone. "I think I am old enough to be quarrelled with; and I do think you're cruel, Jusy."

This made Uncle George smile. "Look out!" he said. "You will be in a quarrel yet, if you are not careful. What is it, Rea?"

While Rea was collecting her thoughts to reply, Jusy took the words out of her mouth.

"She thinks I am cruel, because I said I didn't believe you would build a house for Indians up in your canon."

"It was not that!" cried Rea. "You are real mean, Jusy!"

And so I think, myself, he was. He had done just the thing which is so often done in this world,--one of the unfairest and most provoking of things; he had told the truth in such a way as to give a wrong impression, which is not so very far different, in my opinion, from telling a lie.

"A home for Indians up in the canon!" exclaimed Uncle George, drawing Rea to him, and seating her on his knee. "Did my little tender-hearted Rea want me to do that? It would take a very big house, girlie, for all the poor Indians around here;" and Uncle George looked lovingly at Rea, and kissed her hair, as she nestled her head into his neck. "Just like her mother," he thought. "She would have turned every house into an asylum if she could."

"Oh, not for all the Indians, Uncle George," said Rea, encouraged by his kind smile,--"I am not such a fool as Jusy thinks,--only for those two old ones that are going to be turned out of their home they've always lived in. You know the ones I mean."

"Ah, yes,--old Ysidro and his wife. Well, Rea, I had already thought of that myself. So you were not so much ahead of me."

"There!" exclaimed Rea triumphantly, turning to Jusy. "What do you say now?"

Jusy did not know exactly what to say, he was so astonished; and as he saw Jim and the cats coming up the road at that minute, he gladly took the opportunity to spring down from the veranda and run to meet them.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Hunter Cats of Connorloa, by Helen Jackson