Billy caught up the word eagerly.
"Yes, yes, children, that's right o' Marm Plunkett. It's allers good to pray," and down went simple old Billy on his knees. "You keep on a-danglin' that ere bucket, and I'll pray fur ye, young uns. That'll fetch him." He clasped his hands and shut his earnest eyes.
The children stood in awed silence. Billy, swaying back and forth in his eagerness, began in a high-keyed voice, sounding unlike his ordinary tones:
"'How dothe the little busy bee
Improve each shining hour;
And gather honey all the day
From every fragrant flower'—Amen."
Poor old Billy! this scrap of a rhyme, learned in his far-away boyhood, was the one bit that had stuck in his clouded mind all these years, and had served this pious soul for a prayer ever since. Every night, kneeling reverently by his bedside, he had said it, and every morning when he arose; only then he added the petition, "God bless Mrs. Maxwell, and make Billy good."
Cricket and Hilda, too much amazed to speak, but too much impressed with Billy's earnestness to laugh, stood stock-still as they were; Hilda in the act of stretching out her hands to draw Zaidee back from the well-curb,—where she hung, in imminent danger of following George W.,—and Cricket, still grasping the pole, and looking back over her shoulder, and Helen staring with her great eyes.
As Billy ceased, there was an oppressive moment of silence. He remained on his knees, swaying his gaunt frame slightly, with his eyes still closed. Suddenly Cricket felt the bucket lurch as it lay on the surface of the water below. She looked quickly over the well-curb.
"Oh, Hilda! Billy, hurrah! he's climbed upon the bucket at last! He's way up on it. Now, we'll have him!" and with Hilda to help, she began cautiously to raise the bucket.
Billy slowly got up from the ground, and dusted off his trouser knees.
"It's allers wuth while a-prayin' for things," he remarked.