No loving friends came to inquire after the fate of Hal Hutchings, the English boy. His efforts to save his basket of clean linen had been as vain as his struggles to free himself from the hands of his persecutors. The garments that had been starched and ironed with such scrupulous care were scattered along the wharf, and trampled under the feet of the thoughtless young mob. The old washerwoman on whose errand Hal had been sent forth, was too indignant at the destruction which had befallen her handiwork, to give one kindly thought to the poor boy who had so honorably striven to spare her the misfortune over which she lamented so dolorously. Her Sunday thoughts strayed far more frequently to the dingy, stained garments soaking in her back kitchen, than to Hal Hutchings, quietly lying in Mrs. Robertson's best bedroom.
"I wonder no one comes to inquire after him. Has he no friends, Blair?" said Mrs. Robertson as evening was drawing on.
"I dare say not, mother. I never saw him with anybody. He does errands round town, and has been sleeping at Mrs. McKinstry's, the washerwoman's. He didn't take his meals there, I know, for I've seen him eating bread and cheese in some corner just when other folks were sitting down to dinner. They call him 'Hal the English boy;' but I guess nobody knows much about him."
"A stranger in a strange land," said Mrs. Robertson thoughtfully; and then she rose up and went into the room where Hal was still lying.
Blair took up his Bible. How precious that Bible seemed to him now—the light for his feet, the lamp for his path. With reverence he turned the sacred pages until he found the fifty-first psalm, which he read with solemn earnestness, making its humble petitions truly his own.
While Blair was thus employed, Mrs. Robertson was talking in her own kindly way to the stranger.
"So you are an English boy, Hal," she said. "That will not keep me from loving you, for you know the Bible says we must 'love our enemies;' but I don't believe you are such a very dangerous enemy, after all." Her pleasant smile was like sunshine to the heart of the lonely boy, and his reserve melted away before it.
"I'm Hinglish, because I was born in Hingland," said the boy. "I couldn't help that; and I couldn't blame my father and mother for it neither, for I never knowed them. I've been an orphan always. But I'm an American, because I chose this for my country, and I worked my passage over here, and I haven't begged from anybody."
"I'm glad you want to be an American," said Mrs. Robertson gently; "it is a great privilege. But there is something more to do for every boy who wants to be an American citizen, than just landing in this country and earning his own living, and then by and by voting for our rulers."
Hal opened his large pale blue eyes in confused expectation, and was silent.