YOUNG KORNELIUS 91 



round the top passages, " you must not go outside 

 the door of your room, you might fall downstairs 

 and break your leg again, and that would be 

 dreadful." 



Korni gazed at me with his big eyes, and settled 

 to his picture book again, and presently took to 

 staring out of the window. But before he had been 

 left for ten minutes, the crutches would be tap-tap- 

 tapping along the passages again ! 



At last I caught Kornelius on the stairs with his 

 crutches, laboriously climbing downwards. This was 

 too much. 



"Kornelius," I said, " if I catch you out here 

 again, I will have to make you stay in bed." 



This threat produced an expression of horror in 

 Korni' s face, which gradually changed to a look 

 in which penitence seemed to combine with half a 

 dozen other emotions a look to melt the stoniest 

 heart. 



With a mournful air Korni turned to the window 

 and tapped for his friend Timmo, and in a few 

 minutes the two of them were looking at pictures in 

 the most earnest manner imaginable a subdued 

 and exemplary pair of Eskimo boys. 



I had hardly left them when there came the tap of 

 the crutches again ! 



The time had come for me to be cross with 

 Kornelius ! I marched upstairs, practising a suit- 

 able frown, and stringing together in my mind some 

 suitable Eskimo syllables for the reprimanding of 

 Korni. To the best of my ability I would make him 

 a speech. The tap-tapping grew all the more 



