The Bondage of Ballinger

peeped shyly at Torn from the benches just across the aisle a little girl in a gray pinafore and white apron, a grave little girl with big eyes and pink cheeks and a funny little nose, and with two severe braids of chestnut hair hanging stiffly down her back. And when the boys tormented her, as boys will, and laughed at the garb of her faith, and at her "thee" and "thou," Tom was her champion and defender. The chivalry that was in the boy was perhaps increased by the stories his father had told and read to him, and whenever he bore down to rescue the little maid from her tormentors, he fancied that she was a princess in distress and he her sworn knight. He would be Launcelot or Roland or Ivanhoe, as his humor directed, and he constructed a wonderful cave to which he carried her after a royal battle, although she knew nothing either of his conceit or of his names, and only looked gratefully and wonderingly at him with her big eyes, and believed him to be the most valiant and the most remarkable of all small b