The children needed no second invitation. The van was a paradise to them, and they ran up the steps and looked at everything, and everything seemed charming. They longed to possess such a treasure, and thought the tinker and his wife must be the happiest of mortals.
"I should like to live here always," said Fred, as he and Ronald stood at the door of the van and looked out at the scene around them. "It's so jolly free," continued the boy, "so far better than always being in one house; and the cat there, and the cocks and hens, and old Dobbin—I'd much rather look at things like that than at the maps and pictures on our schoolroom walls."
"Ah! but you don't know all, sir," said the woman, shaking her head. "I was born in a van, and have always lived in one, but I don't want my little laddie here to lead the life," and she danced the crowing baby in her arms as she spoke. "I hope, by and by, we shall have a little cottage of our own and settle down, and my boy can go to school and learn to read his Bible, which is more than his mother can do, for I never had a day's schooling in my life."
"Can't you read?" said little Ronald in astonishment. "I'll come every day that you stay here and teach you. I'll begin to-night!" and before another word could be said he had darted out of the van and was up the street and out of sight, returning in a very few minutes with a large picture-book, out of which he himself had learned to read.
Ronald was a wise little fellow to have brought a picture-book; for such a work of art had never been seen by the woman before, and if reading was only looking at pictures like that she felt she might manage it after all.
She was by no means a stupid scholar, and Ronald was so earnest a little teacher that the progress made was really astonishing. The tinker found a good many jobs in the village, and stayed nearly a fortnight, and by that time Susan could spell little words very nicely, and no longer read a-s-s, donkey, as, misled by the picture, she had done at the beginning of the lessons.
Ronald's mother gave the woman a large print Bible with a great many pictures in it; and when next year the tinker's van again visited the village, Susan was delighted to be able to exhibit her progress, and slowly and reverently she read the parable of the Lost Sheep.
"I read that to my old man most nights," she said; "his father was a shepherd, and he knows all about sheep. Oh, Master Ronald!" said the woman, suddenly changing her tone, "I do bless you for putting it into my head to learn to read."
Certainly Ronald was a happy boy that day.
