Parables from Flowers

by Gertrude P. Dyer

'Mother dear, Mat Morgan says that, as I am now ten years old, it is time for me to begin work like the other lads about here.'

'How, Davie?' she dreamily questioned, for her thoughts were wandering far away, so that she scarcely heard what he said.

'In the pit with him,' was the reply; 'he is so kind and good, I know he will take great care of me.'

'No, no!' she cried, clasping him yet closer to her; 'not in the cruel mine that has robbed us of father!—no—not there!'

'Nay, mother darling,' the boy gently urged; 'it was God who took father home—and he was ready to go! Besides,' he continued, with all the hopefulness of youth, 'I could earn some money every week, and only think how useful that would be!'

'But your poor father did not wish you to be a miner; he hoped you would become a great and clever man,' the mother replied.

He hesitated for a moment. Bright visions had filled his young head of gaining riches and honours 'some day,' that glorious time of the young, and he had thought how proud they both would be of him, and they should neither of them work any more, but live in a lovely home of his providing, and never know care any more. And now!—he clenched his small hands together, and choked back the big lump rising in his throat as bravely he exclaimed,—

'And I will be a clever man, for I will learn at night when I come home, and who knows what I may be one day. Mat Morgan says our manager was only a poor collier lad once, and look at him now. Besides, they are all so good to us here; they loved father dearly.'

So the boy prevailed over her fears, and in a few days he took his place by the side of his old friend Mat Morgan, who grew to love him as his own child. But the mother's heart was grieved when at night her boy returned with the fair golden hair rough and tangled, the once delicate hands torn and hardening with toil; yet the child gave no thought to that. True, this was not the life he would have chosen, for he was a studious boy, but still, was he not 'the bread-winner'? and it was a proudly happy day for him when he laid his first earnings in her lap, and felt her tears upon his cheek as she kissed and blessed her boy.

But the hour he loved the best was when, casting aside all care, he sat on a low stool at her feet, and, with his head resting on her knee, listened as she read aloud their evening chapter from the Book of Life; he was then the child again, not the toiling little miner-lad!—and oh, it was so peaceful!