"Jerry's eyes would have turned green, if he had lived, Nicky. They would, really." "I wouldn't have minded. They'd have been Jerry's eyes." "But he wouldn't have looked like Jerry." "I wouldn't have cared what he looked like. He'd have _been_ Jerry." "I'll give you Jane, Nicky, and all the kittens she ever has, if that would make up." "It wouldn't. You don't seem to understand that it's Jerry I want. I wish you wouldn't talk about him." "Very well," said Dorothy, "I won't." Then Grannie tried. She recommended a holy resignation. God, she said, had given Jerry to Nicky, and God had taken him away. "He didn't give him me, and he'd no right to take him. Dorothy wouldn't have done it. She was only ragging. But when God does things," said Nicky savagely, "it isn't a rag." He hated Grannie, and he hated Mr. Parsons, and he hated God. But he loved Dorothy who had given him Jerry. Night after night Frances held him in her arms at bed-time while Nicky said the same thing. "If--if I could stop seeing him. But I keep on seeing him. When he sat on the mustard and cress. And when he bit me with his sleep-bites. And when he looked at me out of the tree of Heaven. Then I hear that little barking grunt he used to make when he was playing with himself--when he dashed off into the bushes. "And I can't _bear_ it." Night after night Nicky cried himself to sleep. For the awful thing was that it had been all his fault. If he had kept Jerry's weight down Boris couldn't have caught him. "Daddy said so, Mummy." Over and over again Frances said, "It wasn't your fault. It was Don-Don's. He left the door open. Surely you can forgive Don-Don?" Over and over again Nicky said, "I do forgive him." But it was no good. Nicky became first supernaturally subdued and gentle, then ill. They had to take him away from home, away from the sight of the garden, and away from Mr. Parsons, forestalling the midsummer holidays by two months. Nicky at the seaside was troublesome and happy, and they thought he had forgotten. But on the first evening at Hampstead, as Frances kissed him Good-night, he said: "Shall I have to see Mr. Parsons to-morrow?" Frances said: "Yes. Of course." "I'd rather not." "Nonsense, you must get over that." "I--can't, Mummy." "Oh, Nicky, can't you forgive poor Mr. Parsons? When he was so unhappy?" Nicky meditated. "Do you think," he said at last, "he really minded?" "I'm sure he did." "As much as you and Daddy?" "Quite as much." "Then," said Nicky, "I'll forgive him." But, though he forgave John and Mr. Parsons and even God, who, to do him justice, did not seem to have been able to help it, Nicky did not forgive himself. Yet Frances never could think why the sight of mustard and cress made Nicky sick. Neither did Mr. Parsons, nor any schoolmaster who came after him understand why, when Nicky knew all the rest of the verb [Greek: erchomai] by heart he was unable to remember the second aorist.