‘Susan,’ says Fitzgerald mildly but firmly, ‘if you think to escape alive from this spot with these cherries, let me at once warn you of a sense of impending danger.’ ‘Oh, I say, Susan, don’t be a fool!’ says Carew, turning his lazy length upon the grass, a manœuvre that brings him much closer to Susan and the cherries. ‘It’s a beastly shame!’ says Jacky, in a growl. And at this little Tom, as if moved to the very soul, or stomach, sets up a piteous howl. Susan, with all the ‘young martyr’ air about her, looks sternly round. No; she will not give in, and it’s perfectly disgusting of them to think so much of eating things. Her glance finishes at Jacky, who is scowling and threatening her with the fellest of all fell eyes, and then descends at last on Bonnie—Bonnie, who is lying in her arms, his pretty, thin, patient little face against her shoulder. Poor little Bonnie! darling little Bonnie! who has said nothing—not a word—but whose gentle eyes are now resting on the fruit; Bonnie, whose appetite is always miserable—so difficult to please. Susan, seeing that silent, wistful glance, feels her heart sink within her. Must she—must she deny him, her poor little delicate boy, her best beloved of all the many that she loves? Oh, she must! she will be firm. These cherries really are not hers. Even for Bonnie she—— The child stirs in her arms and sighs, the faintest, gentlest little sigh—only one who loved him could have heard it; but with that little sigh went out all Susan’s stern resolutions. Almost unconsciously her hand goes towards the basket that holds the cherries. Slowly, slowly at first, as if held back; but as it nears the glowing fruit it makes a rush, as it were, dives into it, and in a second more Bonnie’s thin little paws are filled with a huge and crimson bunch of the sweet cherries. Alas for Susan’s principles! They have all vanished away like snow in the sun, beneath two little pain-filled eyes. Alas for Susan’s principles again! As Bonnie’s white little face lights up as he catches the pretty fruit, and bites one of them in two with his sharp childish teeth, and as after that he lifts the other half of it to Susan’s mouth, and presses it against her closed but smiling lips, she does not refuse him. She opens her lips, and, against all her beliefs, lets the stolen thing glide between them. The happy laughter of the child as she takes the fruit is nectar to her, and in a little joyous way she hugs him to her, catching him against her breast; and though she does not know it, her one thought is this: ‘Let all things go so long as this one is happy.’ And certainly Bonnie for the moment is happy with his cherries. But the cherry he gave her is the first and only one out of her basket that passes between her lips. And that is self-denial, I can tell you from experience, for a girl of eighteen.