Then came the thought that people used to say prayers in the days when he went with his mother to church. He had been taught to say prayers himself, but had begun to forget them when there was no bed to kneel beside. What did saying prayers mean? In the Bible-stories people prayed when they were in trouble and could not help themselves! Did it matter that he had no church and no bedside? Surely one place must be as good as another, if it was true that God was everywhere! Surely he could hear him wherever he spoke! Neither could there be any necessity for speaking loud! God would hear, however low he spoke! Then he remembered that God knew the thoughts of his creatures: if so, he might think a prayer to him; there was no need for any words!
From the moment of that conclusion, Clare began to pray to God. And now he prayed the right kind of prayer; that is, his prayers were real prayers; he asked for what he wanted. To say prayers asking God for things we do not care about, is to mock him. When we ask for something we want, it may be a thing God does not care to give us; but he likes us to speak to him about it. If it is good for us, he will give it us; if it is not good, he will not give it to us, for it would hurt us. But Clare only asked God to do what he is always doing: his prayer was that God would be good to all his mothers, and to his two fathers, and Mr. Halliwell, and Maly, and Sarah, and his own baby, and Tommy—and poor Pummy, and would, if Glum Gunn beat him, help him to bear the blows, and not mind them very much. He ended with something like this:
“God, I can’t do anything for anybody! I wish I could! You can get near them, God: please do something good to every one of them because I can’t. I think I could go to sleep now, if I were sure you had listened!”
Having thus cast all his cares on God, he did go to sleep; and woke in the morning ready for the new day that arrived with his waking.
Chapter LI.
Clare a true Master.
It would take a big book to tell all the things of interest that happened to Clare in the next few weeks. They would be mainly how and where he found refuge, and how he and Abdiel got things to eat. Verily they did not live on the fat of the land. Now and then some benevolent person, seeing him in such evident want, would contrive a job in order to pay him for it: in one place, although they had no need of him, certain good people gave him ten days’ work under a gardener, and dismissed him with twenty shillings in his pocket.
One way and another, Clare and Abdiel did not die of hunger or of cold. That is the summary of their history for a good many weeks.
One night they slept on a common, in the lee of a gypsy tent, and contrived to get away in the morning without being seen. For Clare feared they might offer him something stolen, and hunger might persuade him to ask no questions. Many respectable people will laugh at the idea of a boy being so particular. Such are immeasurably more to be pitied than Clare. No one could be hard on a boy who in such circumstances took what was offered him, but he would not be so honest as Clare—though he might well be more honest than such as would laugh at him.
Another time he went up to a large house, to see if he might not there get a job. He found the place, for the time at least, abandoned: I suppose the persons in charge had deserted their post to make holiday. He lingered about until the evening fell, and then got with Abdiel under a glass frame in the kitchen-garden. But the glass was so close to them that Clare feared breaking it; so they got out again, and lay down on a bench in a shed for potting plants.
Clare was waked in the morning by a sound cuff on the side of the head. He got off the bench, took up Abdiel, and coming to himself, said to the gardener who stood before him in righteous indignation,