After dinner, business was resumed in the shop, with at least the
resemblance of an increase of vigour, for Mrs Bruce went behind the
counter, and gave her husband time to sit down at the desk to write
letters and make out bills. Not that there was much of either sort of
clerkship necessary; but Bruce, like Chaucer's Man of Law, was so fond
of business, that he liked to seem busier than he was. As it happened
to be a half-holiday, Annie was sent with the rest of the children into
the garden to play up and down the walks.
"An' min'," said Bruce, "an' haud oot ower frae the dog."
In the garden Annie soon found herself at the mercy of those who had
none.
It is marvellous what an amount of latent torment there is in boys,
ready to come out the moment an object presents itself. It is not
exactly cruelty. The child that tears the fly to pieces does not
represent to himself the sufferings the insect undergoes; he merely
yields to an impulse to disintegrate. So children, even ordinarily good
children, are ready to tease any child who simply looks teasable, and
so provokes the act. Now the Bruces were not good children, as was
natural; and they despised Annie because she was a girl, and because
she had no self-assertion.
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