No talent, and Phil's pansies

by Lucy Ellen Guernsey

Phil took up the clothes and looked at them one by one. There was an entire suit, good as new, and, as his mother said, of better fashion and material than any he could afford to buy.

"They look as if they'd just come out of the store," said he in wonder. "Why did she give them away?"

"She said Mr. Cornelius had outgrown them—he grows like a vine in the spring—and she told me herself she had saved them for Phil, because she had heard from Miss Isabel that he was such a good boy."

Phil blushed to the top of his hair as he thought, "Miss Isabel wouldn't say so if she knew how I had sworn at the chickens and hurt the goat, and how I wanted to steal granny's money. Oh dear, if only I hadn't done it!"

He tried on the clothes and found that they fitted very well. They were somewhat large, but that was a "good fault," as granny said, since he was growing very fast.

"So now Phil is fixed for clothes," said granny, "and, Mary dear, you can take the money and buy yourself a new gown for summer."

"Oh, I shall do very well a while yet," said Mary pleasantly. "You need one more than I do."

Phil finished his supper, did up all the chores, and paid a last visit to his garden to see that all was right. As he did so his eyes fell on something half buried in the soft mould. He took it up. It was a handsome pearl-handled knife, with several blades and a corkscrew, and on the handle was a silver plate with the letters H. M. Phil knew the knife, which he had often seen in Horace Maberly's hands. He had evidently used it in opening the gate.

So Horace had left the gate open. Phil's blood tingled with anger again, but he stamped his foot and clenched his teeth so that not a word came through. He put the knife in his pocket, and getting out his Bible, he sat down in his favorite corner to learn his Sunday-school lesson. He looked up the Golden Text, though he had it on his "lesson paper," for he liked to read the verses which came before and after. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another" (1 John 4:10, 11).

Phil did not know the exact meaning of all the long words, but he knew what Christ had come to do, to die for sinners that they might be saved. God loved us so well as that! And "if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another."