couldn’t I thank Him? ’Course,” added Bruce reminiscently, “maybe I said it too loud—’cause I was awful glad and excited when I found Stripey was all right. I ’most shouted it, Mrs. Blythe. Maybe if I'd said it sort of whispery like you and father it would have been all right. Do you know, Mrs. Blythe,”—Bruce dropped to a “whispery” tone, edging a little nearer to Anne—“what I would like to do to the Kaiser if I could?”
“What would you like to do, laddie?”
“Norman Reese said in school today that he would like to tie the Kaiser to a tree and set cross dogs to worrying him,” said Bruce gravely. “And Emily Flagg said she would like to put him in a cage and poke sharp things into him. And they all said things like that. But Mrs. Blythe”—Bruce took a little square paw out of his pocket and put it earnestly on Anne’s knee,—“I would like to turn the Kaiser into a good man—a very good man—all at once if I could. That is what I would do. Don’t you think, Mrs. Blythe, that would be the very worstest punishment of all?”
“Bless the child,” said Susan, “how do you make out that would be any kind of a punishment for that wicked fiend?”
“Don’t you see,” said Bruce, looking levelly at Susan, out of his blackly-blue eyes, “if he was turned into a good man he would understand how dreadful the things he has done are and he would feel so terrible about it that he would be more unhappy and miserable than he could ever be in any other way. He would feel just awful—and he would go on feeling like that forever. Yes”—Bruce clenched his hands and
