Jack the Englishman

by H. Louisa Bedford

"Then you must take care only to do and think such things as will give you a good face," said Tom, with a little laugh, and then he began talking about other things.

How the week sped, a week which Jack was old enough now to look back upon with pleasure all his days! It was an unusually hot and dry year for Tasmania, and the sun, beating upon the forests and rich undergrowth through which they rode day after day, brought out a pungent fragrance that acted like a tonic, preventing any consciousness of fatigue. There was a sense of adventure, too, in travelling by these unknown and little trodden tracks that was quite delightful to a boy, and delightful also was Tom's companionship, and in fuller measure came back his old ascendancy over Jack. Before it had been the affection of a little child, but now it took the form of a boy's hero-worship, the wish to grow into a man something like Uncle Tom or father. The mere fact that Tom could turn his hand to almost anything was a deep source of admiration, from lighting a fire to shoeing a horse. And Tom on his side grew deeply attached to the little boy, whose pluck and courage might have belonged to a boy twice his age, whose interest in all he saw or heard was so singularly alive, and quite unconsciously his influence for good over the boy almost every hour of the day was making itself felt. It was more from what he did than what he said, although with a man like Tom, whose first object and aim in life was to serve God himself and to teach others to serve, it was scarcely possible to live with him many days without some mention of higher things. The mention of such things might pass unnoticed, but the fact that when they passed one or two nights in a shed together, Jack saw Tom kneel down and say his prayers with absorbing earnestness before he crept into his bed of straw, was an object-lesson Jack could not well forget. And again, when they woke in the morning, Tom's hand searched in the knapsack which had served as his pillow for the Testament he always carried about with him, and he would read aloud to Jack some parable, or miracle, said or worked by our Lord, and invest it with an entirely new character, making Jack feel it a reality instead of something written in an old book that might or might not be true. On the last morning of their tour, as they sat together on the bole of a huge forest tree that had been felled and left lying along the ground until such time as it was carted away, Tom chose for the morning reading the account in the Acts of the churches that had not yet received any open manifestation of the Spirit, and of how the Apostles were sent for to bestow the great gift.

"And that is what we now call Confirmation, Jack, that is the Bible teaching about it. I wonder if anyone ever showed Dick Chambers that passage, or tried to make it clear to him. He might change his mind about its being all stuff and nonsense."

Jack coloured a little.

"But everyone who is confirmed isn't good, Uncle Tom."

"I don't say they are, Jack; I only tell you it is a great help, a gift of God that I want every boy and girl baptised in our church to look forward to and get ready for. If you use a gift it may help you immensely; if you neglect it or throw it away that is not God's fault: it's yours."

Jack did not make any answer; Tom did not know if he even understood, but from that day forward Jack renewed his determination to be confirmed some day, when he was old enough, "same as Jessie was." Perhaps it was Jessie's confirmation that helped to give her a "good face," in which conjecture there was more truth than little Jack was aware of.

And that evening found the companions at home again, Jack very bronzed and voluble about all his experiences of the different places they had stayed at, and of the almost wild children they had come across, of the snakes they had killed in the bush, of their picnic meals, etc.; but, of the things that had gone deepest, of his talks with Uncle Tom and of the way Uncle Tom said his prayers, he never spoke at all. They had sunk too deep to come up to the surface. But Eva, as he talked to her, bemoaned the fate that, in making her a girl, cut her off from all these delightful pleasures.

"Uncle Tom, we ought to have a blow-up for Eva before you go," Jack said one day soon after their return. "It is rather dull being a girl, you know. Could not we have a picnic a long way off on Thursday? It's my birthday; I shall be twelve years old, but we could pretend it was Eva's."

Uncle Tom was rather pleased at this budding thoughtfulness for Jack's chum, and caught readily at the notion.