When is a harmless prank not so harmless?

I guess it depends on who you ask.

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Today on the Classic Tales podcast.

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in the show notes and help us to keep the good stuff coming. And now, Honorable Tommy, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

It was the day before Christmas, long ago, when Christmas was seldom observed in New England. There were two houses in the

village separated by a wide yard in which the grass, of a dirty dun color, lay like a frost-woven mat underfoot,

crunching when the children sped over it. It was difficult to understand what the boy and girl found

amusing in that dismal wintry yard,

flanked on one side by the Dunbar farmhouse, with its enormous barns and outbuildings,

on the other by the more modern house, where the roseberries lived.

There was probably nothing except the indomitable spirit of youth.

The boy, Tommy Dunbar,

and the girl, Cora Roseberry, raced back and forth between the leafless, creaking old cherry trees.

They made leaps over a ledge of rock. The girl gave little squeals of merriment from time to time.

...