"Tim was a bad man to pretend to be blind when he wasn't," said Lawrence, severely. "But now, Wikkey, shall I read you a story about the King?"
"Did He live in London?" Wikkey asked, as Lawrence took up the old Book with the feeling that the boy should hear these things for the first time out of his mother's Bible.
"No, He lived in a country a long way off; but that makes no difference, because He is God, and can see us everywhere, and He wants us to be good."
Then Lawrence opened the Bible, and after some thought, half read, half told, about the feeding of the hungry multitude.
Each succeeding evening, a fresh story about the King was related, eagerly listened to, and commented on by Wikkey with such familiar realism as often startled Lawrence, and made him wonder whether he were allowing irreverence; but which at the same time, threw a wondrously vivid light on the histories which, known since childhood, had lost so much of their interest for himself: and certainly, as far awakening first the boy's curiosity, and then his love, went, the method of instruction answered perfectly. For Wikkey did not die at the end of the week, or of many succeeding weeks: warmth and food, and Mrs. Evans' nursing powers combined, caused one of those curious rallies not uncommon in cases of consumption, though no one who saw the boy's thin, flushed cheeks, and brilliant eyes, could think the reprieve would be a long one. Still for the present there was improvement, and Lawrence could not help feeling glad that he might keep for a little while longer the child whose love had strangely brightened his lonely lodgings.
And while Wikkey's development was being carried on in the highest direction, his education in minor matters was progressing under Mrs. Evans' tuition—tuition of much the same kind as she had bestowed years before on Master Lawrence and her sweet Master Robin. By degrees Wikkey became thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of the toilette, and other amenities of civilized life, and being a sharp child, with a natural turn for imitation, he was, at the end of a week or two, not entirely unlike those young gentlemen in his ways, especially when his conversation became shorn of the expletives which had at first adorned it, but which, under Mrs. Evans' sharp rebukes, and Lawrence's graver admonitions that they were displeasing to the King, fast disappeared. Wikkey's remorse on being betrayed into the utterance of some comparatively harmless expression, quite as deep as when one slipped that gave even Lawrence a shock, showed how little their meaning had to do with their use.
One evening Lawrence, returning home to find Wikkey established as usual on the sofa near the fire, was greeted by the eager question—
"Lawrence, what was the King like? I've been a thinking of it all day, and I should like to know. Do you think He was a bit like you?"
"Not at all," Lawrence answered. "We don't know exactly what He was like; but—let me see," he went on, considering, "I think I have a picture somewhere—I had one;" and he crossed the room to a corner where, between the book-case and the wall, were put away a number of old pictures, brought from the "boys' room" at home, and never yet re-hung; among them was a little Oxford frame containing a photograph of the Thorn-crowned Head by Guido. How well he remembered its being given to him on his birthday by his mother! This he showed to Wikkey, explaining that though no one knows certainly what the King is like, it is thought that He may have resembled that picture. The boy looked at it for some time in silence, and then said—
"I've seen pictures like that in shops, but I never knew as it was the King. He looks very sorrowful—a deal sorrowfuller nor you—and what is that He has on His Head?"