Harry determined to make his own terms with his “guv’niss.” He would be good, and learn his lessons, and do his sums, and write his copy and all that, if she would read out of a book to him every day, and describe to him a scene in some far-off land.
She promised.
Before commencing lessons of a forenoon, Miss Campbell read a portion of one of the Gospels to him, and then she prayed. Miss Campbell was one of those girls who are not ashamed to pray, not ashamed to ask mercy, help and guidance from Him from whom all blessings flow. Before leaving school Miss Campbell took the Book again, but now no other portion would he allow her to read except the Revelations. There was a charm about these that never, never palled upon the child.
But always in the evenings “Guvie” had to devote herself to a different kind of literature, and the books now were usually tales of adventure by land and at sea.
Miss Campbell did try her wee pupil with “Sandford and Merton.” I am sorry to say he would have none of it. The “Arabian Nights” pleased better, but he could not quite understand them.
For Sunday reading nothing delighted Harry better than Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” I am happy in being able to put this on record, and boys who have not read the work, have a real treat in store for them.
So Miss Campbell and her pupil got on very well together indeed; and many a delightful walk, ay, and run too, they had in the forest. They were a trio-now, because Eily always made one of the number. She went to school as well as Harry, and if she did not learn anything, at all events she lay still and listened, and that is more than every dog would have done.
Harry introduced his “Guvie,” as he called her, to his pet toad, which she pretended to admire, but was secretly somewhat afraid of.
“John told me, Guvie,” he said one day, “that toadie would go to sleep all winter, so I’m going to put a biscuit in his box for his breakfast when he wakes, then we won’t go near him till spring-time comes.”
They say the child is the father of the man. I believe there is much truth in the statement, so that, in describing Harry’s character as a young boy, I am saving myself the trouble of doing so when he is very much older, and mingling in wilder life.