Not only was Bert's imagination vivid, but his sympathies were also very quick and easily aroused. It was scarcely safe to read to him a pathetic tale, his tears were so certain to flow. The story of Gellert's hound, faithful unto death, well-nigh broke his heart, and that perfect pearl, "Rab and His Friends," bedewed his cheeks, although he read it again and again until he knew it almost by heart.
No one ever laughed at his tenderness of heart. He was not taught that it was unmanly for a boy to weep. It is an easy thing to chill and harden an impressionable nature. It is not so easy to soften it again, or to bring softness to one that is too hard for its own good.
With such a home, Bert Lloyd could hardly fail to be a happy boy, and no one that knew him would ever have thought of him as being anything else. He had his dull times, of course. What boy with all his faculties has not? And he had his cranky spells, too. But neither the one nor the other lasted very long, and the sunshine soon not only broke through the clouds, but scattered them altogether. Happy are those natures not given to brooding over real or fancied troubles. Gloom never mends matters: it can only make them worse.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN HONOURABLE SCAR.
Bert was not learning very much at Mr. Garrison's school. He had some glimmering of this himself, for he said to Frank one day, after they had returned to their seats from having gone through the form—for really it was nothing more—of saying one of their lessons:
"It's mighty easy work getting through lessons at this school, isn't it, Shorty?" And Shorty, being of the same opinion, as he had happened not to be asked any questions, and, therefore, had not made any mistakes, promptly assented.
"That's so, Bert," said he, "and the oftener he asks Munro and you to say the whole lesson, and just gives me the go-by, the better I like it."
But Bert was not the only one who noticed that his education was not making due progress. His father observed it too, and, after some thinking on the subject, made up his mind that he would allow Bert to finish the spring term at Mr. Garrison's, and then, after the summer holidays, send him to some other school.