"Yes, mother, I know him. Captain Bayley has had some business with him, and asked me to come down here to see him. You are to sit down until he comes."
"But that will never do, Harry. Why, what would he think of us if he comes in and finds us sitting down in his parlour just as if the place belonged to us?"
"It's all right, mother, I will make it right with him; he's a good fellow, is the new master—a first-rate fellow."
"Is he, now?" John asked, interested, as he and Sarah, seeing nothing else to do, sat down. "And his name is John Holl, just the same as mine?"
"Just the same, John, and he's not unlike you either. Now, when I tell you what a kind action he did once, you will see the sort of fellow he is. Once, a good many years ago, when he wasn't as well off as he is now, when he was just a hard-working man, earning his weekly pay, a poor woman with a child fell down dying at his door. Well, you know, other people would have sent for a policeman and had them taken off to the workhouse, but he and his wife took them into their house and tended the lady till she died."
"That was a right-down good thing," John said, quite unmindful of the fact that he too had done such an action.
KINDNESS REWARDED.—III.
Sarah did not speak, but gave a little gasping cry, and threw her apron, which she wore indoors and out, over her head; a sure sign with her that she was going to indulge in what she called "a good cry." John looked at her in astonishment.
"And more than that, John," Harry went on; "they kept the child, and brought him up as one of their own; and though afterwards they had a large family, they never made him feel that he was a burden to them, though he grew up a cripple, and was able to do nothing to repay them for all their goodness. Well, at last the boy's friends were found. They had lots of money, and the time came at last when they bought a business for John Holl; and when he came, there the cripple boy was, sitting at the fire, to welcome them, and say, 'Welcome, father! and welcome, mother!'" and Harry held out his hands to them both.
Even now John Holl did not understand. He was naturally dull of comprehension, and the loud sobbing of his wife so bewildered and confounded him that it divided his attention with Harry's narrative.