But she was too kind-hearted to hurt anybody in any way,
even a boy whom she did not like, so she tried to treat him as nicely
as she could, and she told nobody but her grandmother, to whom she
told everything, that she was not as pleased to be with him as he was
to be with her.
Terence, in his turn, did not always treat Kathleen well, any more
than he did anybody else. He was ill-natured with her and he played
tricks on her that were not pleasant at all, and yet he wanted to be
always with her. Perhaps it was partly because she was more kind to
him than anybody else, except Ellen. For nobody else liked him. And if
he was bad-tempered and unkind to other people, it made other people
unkind and bad-tempered to him, but nothing could make Kathleen unkind
to anybody.
"It's not fair you all are to Terence," Ellen said once to Mrs.
O'Brien, "to think bad of him the way you do. There's things about him
that don't seem right, I know, but those things don't show the way he
really is. I dunno if I'm making you understand me. I'm his mother and
I know him better nor anybody else, and I know he's different from the
way he seems to you, and even the way he seems to me sometimes.
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