CHAPTER XXXII.
LITTLE LENNY’S ADVENTURES.
Oh! ’tis a peerless boy,
Fearless, ingenuous, courteous, capable:
He’s all the mother’s, from the top to toe.—Shakespeare.
Was little Lenny frightened when he woke up and found himself in that strange and wretched garret, closely surrounded by new and terrible faces?
Not at all. Neither by nature nor by training was the baby-boy a coward. The child of many generations of heroes had inherited no craven fears; the cherished darling of the household had been taught none.
In a word, he was a plucky little fellow, afraid of neither man, beast or devil.
And there was still another reason why on this occasion he was not afraid. For if, as it has been written by the prince of poets, “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,” how much more hath beautiful and gracious childhood?
The wretched men and women, gathered around this pretty boy, looked on him, not with ferocious faces, but with smiles; and not with the deceitful smiles whose insincerity a child will detect more quickly than an adult can, but real, heartfelt smiles, called up by seeing among them “something better than they had known.”
Yes, even while they were wresting from him his little treasures of finery and jewelry, they did it with an expression of eagerness rather than of ferocity.