Billy hurried back through the path fields, intending to return to his grandfather immediately; but in the orchard, hanging out clean clothes, was Mrs. Brown, and the thought struck him that he would tell her about the gardening tools.
"Oh, Granny," he began, running up to her, "I've had a present—at least I'm to have it by-and-by. A set of gardening tools!"
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown. "And who's going to give you that?" she asked sharply. "Not your grandfather, I hope?"
"No, Mr. Turpin—Mr. Tom Turpin," Billy replied. "It's a set he had when he was a boy. Now I shall be able to help grandfather, shan't I?"
Mrs. Brown looked at Billy without answering, and smiled. There was something so contemptuous in her smile that the little boy turned from her with reddening cheeks. Of course she thought he was too small and weak to do gardening, he told himself.
Tom Turpin sent the tools in the evening, as he had promised. Mrs. Brown barely gave them a glance, but her husband pronounced them to be "first-rate" and just the right weight for his grandson's use.
"I may start using them to-morrow, mayn't I, Grandfer?" asked Billy.
"Yes, if all's well," William Brown answered, smiling; "that means if you sleep well, and come down looking better to-morrow morning than you did to-day."
That night Billy had no bad dreams to disturb him. He added the young soldier's prayer—"Be not Thou far from me, O Lord—" to his usual evening prayers, and fell asleep very quickly. He did not awake till morning—the morning of another beautiful day.