"Why, so I could!" said Noel. "Could you help me to write it?"
"I bain't much on a scholar, but my wife, she be a fine writer! You come on home with me, and we'll get 'er to set her pen to work for 'ee."
Noel slipped his hand inside the big horny one of his friend and trotted home with him quite contentedly. His cottage was up a lane at the end of the village. Mrs. Thorn, his wife, was just dishing a very nice dish of stewed rabbit; the little kitchen, though small and bare, was beautifully clean. In a chair up at the table sat a little white-faced, dark-haired boy about a year younger than Noel. His name was Bertie.
Mrs. Thorn listened with a pleasant smile to Noel's story. She asked him to sit down and have a bit of food with them, and promised to help him write his letter afterwards.
"I've heard of you, dear," she said. "I love the name you give my husband. And 'twas you who sowed some flowers 'mongst the graves in the churchyard. I lost my mother five months ago, and one day I found some sweet-peas growing on her grave. The vicar—he told me who had done it. I did feel pleased and proud."
"I wish I'd a grave in God's garden," said Noel eagerly. "I'd have flowers all over it. I've a garden of my own with a big Chris'mas tree in it. He's growing bigger and bigger, and at Chris'mas I'm going to have a party. Would your little boy like to come to it?"
"Indeed he would. Poor Bertie isn't strong. He can't go to school. He suffers from asthma."
Before the meal was over Noel was chattering away quite happily. And when it was done, Mrs. Thorn cleared away the dishes into the back kitchen, and her husband said he would wash them up whilst the letter was being written. Noel and Mrs. Thorn had a good deal of talk together over it. And finally this was what Mrs. Thorn wrote at his dictation, Noel signing the letter himself in big capital letters:
"MY DARLING MUMS,—"
"I never meant to make a mess, I truly didn't. I had nothing to do,
I pulled out your drawers to tidy, and things spilt themselves, and
Dinah is making me out wicked in her letter, and Chris locked me in the
cupboard, and I have nobody to be my friend. And I wish you were home,
darling Mums, and now God's man has given me some nice dinner,
and Mrs. Thorn is writing this. I like her, and Bertie is coming to my
Chris'mas tree. Good-bye, Mums, and please love me like God does, and
I do try to be His good boy."
"NOEL."
When this letter was written, Tom Thorn asked Noel if he had not better go home.