With boys it will generally be found that, if they have taken to solitary ways, and belong to the class of children who are pathetically different to the rest, they have some bent, some special interest, which they keep carefully to themselves until a really sympathetic friend wins their secret from them. Not infrequently it is a hiding-place inside a bush or in some corner of the garden where rubbish has been thrown and where the small boy has made himself a “house” with pieces of an old packing case and any other oddments that have come to hand. Sometimes it is an animal of which he has found the home and with which he spends most of his spare time. A toad in a hole in a wall was for a long time the secret joy of a very small boy until his little sister confided to him that she had got a toad in a hole close by, which on examination proved to be the same animal which had two outlets to its abode! The boy’s secret being thus discovered all his pleasure was gone, and he at once deserted his pet.
The Very Dead Frogs!
The present writer happened once to pay a visit to some friends who had a little son of about three or four years old. This little fellow used often to disappear in the garden, and was evidently in enjoyment of some secret which he was too shy to impart to anyone. After a few days his confidence was gained, and he led off his new friend to a spot where there was a muddy little pool about two feet in diameter. On the edge of this were two frogs which he had found dead, and had brought here hoping that they would revive. They had been dead for some time and were anything but sweet, but he stroked them and looked up in the most wistful way to see whether his pets were properly appreciated. It was really pathetic to see his eyes fill with tears when he was told that they were quite, quite dead, and must be buried without further delay.
Sometimes, of course, the pathos in a child is accounted for by some physical infirmity which separates him or her from the rest. Here is an instance.
Children and the Painter Man.
A painter had one day set up his umbrella and easel close to a little hamlet, and when school was over there was the usual rush of the children to look at “the man” and see what he was doing. Hating solitude and delighting in children, he faced quickly round upon his stool and gave them a nod of welcome. “Come to see what sort of a picture I’m making, eh?” was his greeting. “Yezzur,” was the reply in the broad dialect of the district. “Well, now, what do you think of it?” he asked, as he held it up for them to see. At first there is only much drawing in of breath and many an “Oh!” as they look at what seems to them at first sight a meaningless kaleidoscope of colours. At last one makes out one thing and one another in the unfinished drawing. “There’s the tree, look!” “See the blue sky!” “I can see William Timms’s house, I can!” And so on for some minutes until almost every part of the picture had been properly identified. Just then a shout from one or two women proclaimed the fact that those who wanted any dinner had better make haste and get it while they had a chance. This gave “the man” a few quiet minutes during which he ate his own sandwiches, but before he had swallowed the last mouthful the troop of children was back again to see all that might be seen before the school bell rang.
Jacob.
It was during these last few minutes that the painter noticed a boy whom he had not seen among the others before. He was a little chap—not more than six or seven years old—with soft fair hair and a pink and white complexion. Two things attracted his attention to the boy. One was the extreme neatness and cleanness of his dress. His clothes were not of better material than those of the other boys, but they were so very tidy. His collar, too, was spotlessly white, and his hair glossy and unruffled. The other thing about him which seemed peculiar was the amount of deference and consideration that was shown him by the rest. He was given a good place close behind “the man’s” elbow, and once or twice, when there was some pushing, one of the children called out, “Now, then, keep quiet, can’t you? Don’t you see you’re shovin’ against Jacob Joyce?”
Now and then, too, there would be a curious sort of appeal to the little fellow: someone would say, “Isn’t it lovely, Jacob? There’s red and blue and all manner of colours?” And Jacob would solemnly answer “I likes yed!” Then a whisper would go round, “Hearken to him; he likes red, Jacob does.”
And all the while to the painter as he worked away there seemed something odd about the boy, and something unusual if not uncanny in the way in which the others treated him.