A boy ought always to stand up for his sister, and protect her from everybody, and do everything to make her happy, for she can only be his sister once, and he would be so awfully sorry if she died and then he remembered that his conduct towards her had sometimes been such.

Mr. Withers doesn\'t come to our house any more. One night Sue saw him coming up the garden-walk, and father said, "There\'s the other one coming, Susan; isn\'t this Travers\'s evening?" and then Sue said, "I do wish somebody would protect me from him he is that stupid don\'t I wish I need never lay eyes on him again."

I made up my mind that nobody should bother my sister while she had a brother to protect her. So the next time I saw Mr. Withers I spoke to him kindly and firmly—that\'s the way grown-up people speak when they say something dreadfully unpleasant—and told him what Sue had said about him, and that he ought not to bother her any more. Mr. Withers didn\'t thank me and say that he knew I was trying to do him good, which was what he ought to have[Pg 181] said, but he looked as if he wanted to hurt somebody, and walked off without saying a word to me, and I don\'t think he was polite about it.

He has never been at our house since. When I told Sue how I had protected her she was so overcome with gratitude that she couldn\'t speak, and just motioned me with a book to go out of her room and leave her to feel thankful about it by herself. The book very nearly hit me on the head, but it wouldn\'t have hurt much if it had.

Mr. Travers was delighted about it, and told me that I had acted like a man, and that he shouldn\'t forget it. The next day he brought me a beautiful book all about traps. It told how to make mornahundred different kinds of traps that would catch everything, and it was one of the best books I ever saw.

Our next-door neighbor, Mr. Schofield, keeps pigs, only he don\'t keep them enough, for they run all around. They come into our garden and eat up everything, and father said he would give almost anything to get rid of them.

Now one of the traps that my book told about was just the thing to catch pigs with. It was made out of a young tree and a rope. You bend the tree down and fasten the rope to it so as to make a slippernoose, and when the pig walks into the slippernoose the tree flies up and jerks him into the air.

[Pg 182]
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