He tried to figure out why the fact that Martin Moreland owned the house in which they lived, should give him the right repeatedly to enter it late at night and attack him physically. Of course, Junior had lied to his father. He lied to every one when a lie suited his purpose better than the truth. He lied habitually to his mother, to his playmates, to his teachers; but even so, Jason could not understand why his teachers were not left to deal with him, as they were with other boys in case of wrong doing. By and by, he remembered the long walk he had made to Bluffport for the canary which he had bought with some of the money he had saved for his own use, earned by doing extra work on Saturdays and of nights and mornings and during summer vacations in the grocery of Peter Potter. He had understood why Mahala could not invite him to her party, and he understood as surely that she would have done it if she could; and that made everything concerning her all right with Jason. To his mind, the will to do was in no way related to the power of execution. Because Mahala wanted to invite him, he had thought deeply, and the loveliest thing he could think of in connection with her was a bird, as gold as her hair, that spent its life in spontaneous song,—the tiny, domestic creature that loved the bars of the only home its kind had known for generations and would have been terrified and lost outside them. He had been compelled to walk far and fast, to beg rides when he could, in order to cover the distance, and get Peter Potter’s hand to frame the note for him that he tied upon the cage, in time for the party. He had left the bird at her door; he had seen Mahala love it. He had felt her hand on his arm, her gift thrust into his fingers; he had heard her voice urging him to protect himself; but not one word had she said to chide him for the impulse that had caused him to tear the piece of brick from the border of Mrs. Spellman’s flower bed and send it smashing against the head of the boy who had dared to touch her roughly, to lay the hateful red of his full-lipped mouth on her delicate face. The sunlight slowly warmed Jason and comforted him. He began to feel the gnawing of hunger. He remembered with a shock that almost toppled him off the stump, that all the honours of the previous evening had been his. He had watched the party from the vantage of a maple tree outside the parlour window, and it had been a long time before he had gained the courage to set his gift before the door, ring the bell, and rush back to his viewpoint. Now he recalled the fact, that while Junior’s gift had been shown to the other children and examined and exclaimed upon, it was his gift that Mahala had taken into her arms. He did not even have to shut his eyes to see her face strained against the wires of the cage. He could hear her voice crying: “Oh, you dear little bird, I love you!” in Billings’ cattle pasture quite as plainly as he had heard it the previous night.