"ONLY A LITTLE BOX."
Uncle Bobo was sitting at the door of his shop one golden September day, when the atmosphere of the row was oppressive, and his heart was heavy within him.
Little Miss Joy was mending—so the doctors said; for Uncle Bobo had declared two heads were better than one, and had insisted on calling in a second opinion.
Yes; they all said little Miss Joy was better. But in what did this betterness consist? She was still lying in that upper chamber, whence she had always smiled her good-morning on Patience Harrison, and sang her hymn of thanksgiving as the little birds sing their matins to the rising sun.
Better! yes, she was better; for there was now no danger to her life. But the fall had injured her back, and she could not move without pain. The colour was gone from her rosy lips, and the light from those lovely gentian eyes was more soft and subdued. Little Miss Joy, who had been as blithe as a bird on the bough and so merry and gladsome, that she deserved her name of "Little Sunbeam," was now a patient sick child, never complaining, never fretful, and always greeting Uncle Bobo with a smile—a smile which used to go to his heart, and send him down to his little shop sighing out—as to-day—
"Better—better! I don't see it; the doctor doesn't know! What are doctors for, if they can't make a child well? I pay enough. I don't grudge them their money, but I expect to see a return for it. And here comes Patience Harrison to tell me what I don't see—that my little sunbeam is better."
Patience Harrison was crossing the row to Uncle Bobo's door as he spoke. Her face wore the same expression of waiting for something or some one that never came, as it did on the morning when we first saw her looking up and looking down the row for Jack.
It was a wonderfully warm September. No news had been brought of the wanderer: the news for which her soul thirsted. George Paterson, it is true, had heard an inkling of news, but it was not anything certain. He had heard from a sailor that Jack Harrison had been seen aboard the Galatea by a passenger who had been put ashore as the Galatea passed the Lizard; and tidings had come that the Galatea had been lost off the coast of Spain, and only nine of the crew or passengers aboard had survived to tell the tale! That the Galatea was lost seemed certain, but that Jack was aboard her was not proved. The man who reported that he had seen him could not be sure of his name. He heard him called Jack, but so were hundreds of other boys. He had understood that he was a runaway, kept on sufferance by the captain to please the second mate; but that was all, and it was not much. Certainly not enough to warrant adding to Patience Harrison's heavy burden of sorrow. So George Paterson kept the suspicion to himself, and waited for confirmation of the report before he mentioned it.
Patience Harrison had nursed and cared for Joy as if she had been her own child, and Uncle Bobo was not ungrateful.
"Well," he said, as she leaned against the door, a variety of articles making a festoon over her head, and a bunch of fishing-tackle catching a lock of her abundant hair, which was prematurely grey:—"Well, is the grand affair coming off to-morrow?"