Forgotten Tales of Long Ago

by E. V. Lucas

Here he lay in a most pitiable condition, calling upon his mother, while the wounded boy on the other side joined in the concert of woe.

'Oh, it served you rightly!' exclaimed the young assailants, who were looking over the wall, and ran away as soon as they saw Mr. Random come into the garden to inquire the cause of the uproar.

His first concern was to carry Dicky indoors, and then, having wiped away the blood and tears, he asked him how it happened.

'I was only trying to get a pear for my mother,' said Richard, 'when these boys threw stones at me, and hit me!'

'That was very cruel,' said his father, 'to meddle with you when you were doing nothing to them, and if I can find them out they shall be punished for it.'

Mr. Random immediately set off to the next house, but was met at his own door by the father of the wounded boy, who was coming with him in his arms to demand satisfaction. This brought the whole truth out, and the artful little fellow was found to have concealed a part of the real case. Instead of saying 'he was only getting a pear,' he should have said that he was throwing large stones at the topmost pear on the tree, and that every stone went over the wall, he could not tell where.

'Ah, Richard,' said his father, 'it is little better than story-telling to conceal a part of the truth. The affair now wears quite a new face. It was you that gave the first assault, and will have to answer for all the bad consequences. It is my duty to see that this unoffending boy is taken care of; but if his leg be so cut or bruised that he cannot get so good a living when he comes to be a man as he might otherwise have done, how would you like to make up the deficiency? You cannot doubt that he has a demand upon you equal to the damage you may have done to him. He is poor, and his father must send him to the hospital, but it would be unjust of me to suffer it. No, on the contrary, I shall prevent this by taking him home and sending you there, where Dr. Hardheart makes his patients smart before he cures them. Come, get ready to go, for delays in wounds of the head are not to be trifled with.'

Mr. Random then ordered the servant to go for a coach, in which Dicky most certainly would have been sent off had not word been brought back that there was not a coach on the stand. During this time Dicky had fallen on his knees, entreating that he might remain at home, and offering promises to be less heedless in future; nay, he was willing to yield up all his toys to the maimed little gardener.

The boy's father, though but a labouring man, had a generous mind; he wanted nothing of this kind, but only wished him to be more cautious in future, as the same stones, thrown at random, might have either blinded his son or fractured his skull, instead of merely hurting his leg. Mr. Random then insisted on Richard's giving him half-a-crown, and asking pardon for the misfortune occasioned by his carelessness.

This heavy sum was directly taken out of the hoard which had been laid by for the purchase of a set of drawing instruments, but he had a yet heavier account to settle with his father for damaging the cucumber-frame. He had broken as much of it as would come to fifteen shillings to mend, and as payment was insisted on, or close confinement until the whole was settled, he was compelled to transfer to his father all his receipts for the ensuing five months before he could again resume his scheme of laying by an adequate sum to purchase the drawing utensils. Independently of which he always carried a strong memorial of his folly on his nose, which was so scarred that he endured many a joke, as it were, to keep alive in his memory the effect of his folly. Indeed, he never looked in the glass without seeing his reproach in his face, and thus at length learned never to play without first thinking if it were at a proper time and in a proper place.