“And sure enough, the boy was quite willing, now, to go out and sit on the rocks, for he was eager to use the wonderful glass, which was to make the great ships seem almost within reach of his hand. He took the glass, and when his mother had screwed it to the right length, he put it to his eyes, and slowly turned about, first toward the sea, then toward the house where they were lodging, and last to his mother; then he let the glass drop, with a puzzled, almost frightened look on his little face.
“‘Why, mamma!’ he said, ‘the ships look miles and miles and miles farther away, and the captain’s house looks like a pigeon-house, and you look like a little bit of a girl at the end of a great long lane. And the captain said it would make everything look large and near.’” Johnny began to laugh.
“What a little goose!” he said. “He’d turned the wrong end foremost, hadn’t he, mamma?”
“That was just what he had done,” said Mrs. Leslie, smiling, “and you should have seen his face clear, and have heard his exclamations of delight, when his mother showed him how to use the glass, and he turned it the right way. There was no more trouble about keeping him out of doors, after that. And now, perhaps you’d like to know who he was. His name was Johnny Leslie, and he had just had measles.”
“Oh, mamma! Really and truly? I remember all about the sea and the rocks, but I’d forgotten about the glass. What a little simpleton I must have been! And I do believe I’ve been growing into a bigger one ever since! I see what papa meant, now. But just look here, mamma—how could things have seemed right to-day, any way I looked at them?”
And Johnny gave a rapid sketch of his various annoyances and misfortunes.
“It’s too late to settle all that to-night,” said his mother, “and besides, I’d rather have you think it all out for yourself, first, so we will postpone the ‘how’ till to-morrow night. Can you say ‘Let me with light and truth be blest,’ for me, before I go?”
It was the psalm Johnny had learned for the previous Sunday, and he said it very perfectly, for he had liked it, and so remembered it better than he did some things. His mother tucked him up, and kissed him, and left him with his heart full of love and repentance, and a determination to “begin all over again” the next morning.