“But you’re exactly like Truth,” I exclaimed—“exactly!”
“Hush!” she said.
III.—The Exemplar
Once upon a time there was a little boy who had a fit of naughtiness. He refused to obey his nurse and was, as she said afterwards, that obstreperous that her life for about half an hour was a burden. At last, just as she was in despair, a robin fluttered to the window-sill of the nursery and perched on it, peeping in.
“There,” said the nurse, “look at that dear little birdie come to see what all the trouble’s about. He’s never refused to have his face washed and made clean, I know. I’d be ashamed to cry and scream before a little pretty innocent like that, that I would.”
Now this robin, as it happened, was a poisonously wicked little bird. He was greedy and jealous and spiteful. He continually fought other and weaker birds and took away their food; he pecked sparrows and tyrannized over tits. He habitually ate too much; and quite early in life he had assisted his brothers and sisters in putting both their parents to death.
None the less the spectacle of his pretty red breast and bright eye shamed and soothed the little boy so that he became quite good again.
IV.—The Good Man and Cupid
There was once a good and worthy man, a minister of the gospel and an altruist of intense activity, who was grievously distressed by the unhappy marriages in his neighbourhood. He saw young men who ought (as he thought) to marry Jane and Eliza leading to the altar Violet and Ermyntrude; and young women fitted to be wise helpmates to John and Richard setting their caps at Reginald and Hughie; the result being the usual bickerings and dissatisfactions of the ill-matched.
The matter troubled him so seriously that he joined a toxophilite club and took lessons in archery until he could hit the gold at five hundred yards twenty times in succession; and having reached this state of proficiency he called on Dan Cupid and expressed to that mischievous and uncovered boy his disapproval of the happy-go-lucky way in which he pulled his bow-string and directed his arrows, almost without looking. He then offered himself to shoot in Cupid’s stead.