"Poor Fred!" said Mr. Muir, gently stroking the firm little hand that lay by his side.
"Yes, it was pretty bad at first, but since I came here," and Fred lowered his voice to a confidential murmur, "I've had such good times. You see, Miss Bess is no end good to me, and she's more fun than half the boys. She reads to me and plays games with me, and we go to walk together, and, really, we do have lots of fun."
"You are a real hero, my boy," said Mr. Muir warmly. "A brave boy will make a brave man."
"Yes," said Fred, nodding soberly; "that's what Miss Bess said she wanted me to be. But it's kind of hard work sometimes, for I do get awfully mad at the boys when they do things I can't."
Frank Muir smiled to himself at the confession so artlessly made. The boy interested him greatly, for he seemed so shy, yet had responded so quickly to his attentions. And what a picture he made there, sitting on one foot on the sofa, with the other foot in its dainty slipper dangling towards the floor, while, in his earnest talking, his color came and went, and his smile and frown succeeded each other by turns.
"As long as you were not at church last night," the young man proposed, "suppose I sing something to you now. That is, of course, if Miss Carter will excuse us." And he looked to her for her consent.
"That isn't much like Muir," said Mr. Washburn in a low tone, as his friend seated himself at the piano. "He isn't given to singing, except when he has to. He seems to have taken a fancy to your charge there."
"Fred surely returns the compliment," said Bess, as the boy followed to the piano. "I don't see what has come over him to talk so much to a stranger, for he is usually so shy."
"Muir is irresistible to nearly everybody, I find," replied the rector quietly.
Then they were silent, as Mr. Muir played a little prelude, light, rocking, swinging, with an occasional dash like the breaking of a tiny wave on a pebbly shore. Then, in the same clear, sweet tenor that had fascinated the child before, he began to sing the quaint little lullaby,—