As you sit at twilight in the "sweet safe corner of the household fire," the sound of the raindrops on the window-pane mingling with the laughing treble of childish voices in some distant room, you see certain pictures in the dying flame,—pictures unspeakably precious to every one who has lived, or loved, or suffered.
I have my memory-pictures, too; and from the fairest frame of all shines Patsy's radiant face as it looked into mine long ago when I told him the story of Victor.
CHAPTER VI.
A LITTLE "HOODLUM'S" VIRTUE KINDLES AT THE TOUCH OF JOY.
"If you make children happy now, you will make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it."
he next morning when I reached the little tin shop on the corner,—a blessed trysting-place, forever sacred, where the children waited for me in sunshine, rain, wind, and storm, unless forbidden,—there on the step sat faithful Patsy, with a clean and shining morning face, all glowing with anticipation. How well I remember my poor lad's first day! Where should I seat him? There was an empty space beside little Mike Higgins, but Mike's character, obtained from a fond and candid parent, had been to the effect "that he was in heaven any time if he could jest lay a boy out flat"! And there was a place by Moses, but he was very much of a fop just then, owing to a new "second-hand" coat, and might make scathing allusions to Patsy's abbreviated swallow-tail.