And how did I know it? The boy does not ask; the man does. Oh, the freshness, the honesty, the vigor of a boy’s heart! how the memory of it refreshes like the first gush of spring, or the break of an April shower!
But boyhood has its Pride as well as its Loves.
My uncle is a tall, hard-faced man; I fear him when he calls me—“child;” I love him when he calls me—“Paul.” He is almost always busy with his books; and when I steal into the library door, as I sometimes do, with a string of fish, or a heaping basket of nuts to show him—he looks for a moment curiously at them, sometimes takes them in his fingers—gives them back to me, and turns over the leaves of his book. You are afraid to ask him if you have not worked bravely; yet you want to do so.
You sidle out softly, and go to your mother; she scarce looks at your little stores; but she draws you to her with her arm, and prints a kiss upon your forehead. Now your tongue is unloosened; that kiss and that action have done it; you will tell what capital luck you have had; and you hold up your tempting trophies; “are they not great, mother?” But she is looking in your face, and not at your prize.
“Take them, mother,” and you lay the basket upon her lap.
“Thank you Paul, I do not wish them: but you must give some to Bella.”
And away you go to find laughing, playful, cousin Isabel. And we sit down together on the grass, and I pour out my stores between us. “You shall take, Bella, what you wish in your apron, and then when study hours are over, we will have such a time down by the big rock in the meadow!”
“But I do not know if papa will let me,” says Isabel.
“Bella,” I say, “do you love your papa?”
“Yes,” says Bella, “why not?”