Page:The little blue devil (IA littlebluedevil00mackiala).pdf/30

remarks, but somehow Tony was seldom impressed by them. Now he addressed himself to Agatha.

“Ibrahim’s always trying to make things hard for me; he does his best to work the others up too.”

“But you mustn’t be unforgiving, Tony. Forgive and forget, you know.”

“But I don’t. I always remember. When people are nice to me too. I’ll pay it all back-that’s why I don’t want you to do too much for me, it makes it hard. . . . I hate owing things. . . . My father too. . . . but I was forgetting then; I said I wouldn’t talk of that any more.”

“But, Tony, that’s dreadful.”

“Well then, I’m dreadful. Nobody taught me that—it’s just there.”

“But we all owe each other things, we must make up our minds to that; but we can always go on paying back, though it’s not always possible to pay the very people we owe things to. Don’t you see, Tony, that it all comes to the same thing in the end—it’s very beautiful, I think—if everyone remembers to pay somebody for kindnesses they have received? Don’t you see how it all works out? And as for forgiving, we must forgive as we hope to be forgiven.”

Agatha, flushed with earnestness and extremely pleased with her own arguments, which she knew were true, though she had never put them into words before, ceased, and glanced at Tony to see what impression she was making, but that small person was annoyingly silent. Agatha knew she had sounded rather muddled, but it was all so plain and true really—he surely must see it as she did.

Tony hugged his knees and stared, intent but unseeing, at the small bald patch at the back of Mr. Wilcox’s head, which bobbed up and down with unfailing regularity as the missionary wrote. Agatha waited patiently for his reply, which came at last but was hardly satisfactory.