Vivian's Lesson

by Elizabeth W. Grierson

‘I could manage to give the dog your little girl’s cakes,’ said Vivian eagerly. He was very kind-hearted, and, besides, he began to see a way of escape for himself. ‘I could give him the cakes, only you would have to promise’——

‘To promise not to tell about the window?’ interrupted the man, looking up with a gleam in his eye. ‘I would gladly promise you that, for, after all, it is none of my business. So we will make a bargain. If you will take these cakes, and give them to Monarch about the darkening, just when my little girl is having her supper—for it will please her to think that he is eating them then—I will go right away, and never tell a word about all I have seen this morning; no, not though I read about it in the papers. But you must give me your Bible oath as you will be true, and give them to the dog, and not guzzle them yourself.’

‘Oh, you may be sure that I won’t eat them,’ said Vivian hastily, shuddering at the mere thought of eating anything that had been in contact with the man’s dirty coat; ‘and I promise to give them to Monarch. I can easily run out at tea-time, and put them in his kennel.’

‘Say “I take my Bible oath not to eat them myself, and to give them to the dog at tea-time,”’ said the man sternly, ‘else I’ll stay here and tell the gentleman.’

Vivian hesitated. To say that he took his Bible oath seemed to him very much like swearing, and that would be to sink one step deeper into the mire of despair and wickedness into which he had already fallen.

Just then the clock on the Heath rang out the half-hour.

‘You’d better choose quick, for they’ll be coming home from church,’ said the man, who had no desire to be found in the grounds, and who yet wished to carry his point.

The warning had its due effect on Vivian. With trembling haste he stumbled over the hated words, and then, reaching out his hand for the two little cakes, he thrust them into his trousers-pocket, and turned and ran into the house, feeling dully that fate was all against him, while the man, with a satisfied smile on his face, swung himself up into the branches of the oak-tree, and after a careful survey of the Heath to see that there was no one in sight, let himself lightly on the path on the other side of the hedge, and walked quickly away.

All through dinner-time, and through the short winter afternoon that followed, Vivian waited in sickening anxiety for some one to come in with the news of the broken windows. He knew that they must soon be discovered, for the first person who walked round that way could not fail to notice them, and then he would be sure to be questioned, and he would need to tell lies to shield himself. Poor little boy! he was fast finding out how true the saying is, that ‘one lie needs six to cover it,’ and the hot tears came into his eyes as he thought of last Sunday’s talk with his mother, and of the many good resolutions he had made in church, ay, and which he had meant with all his heart to keep.

The discovery was not destined to be made that day, however. The summer-house stood right away from the stables and greenhouses, so that none of the men needed to go near it; and as the frost gave way again, as it had done on so many other days during the week, and an afternoon of heavy rain succeeded the brilliant sunshine of the morning, Aunt Dora did not insist on the children going out for their usual run, but sent them up into the schoolroom, where they spent the afternoon quietly with Sunday puzzles and story-books, so as not to disturb Isobel, who was still much more inclined to sleep than to talk.