“Was the thimble really hidden last night, Johnny? You know I was called away before anybody found it, and you were all declaring that this time, you were sure, it couldn’t be ‘in plain sight.’”
Johnny laughed, but he looked a little foolish, too, as he answered,—
“Why no, mamma—it was perched on the damper of the stove. I declare, that game puzzles me more and more every time we play it; I might as well be an idiot and be done with it! But what made you think of that just now, mamma dear?”
“I suppose it came into my mind because I want you to look a little harder before you let yourself be quite certain about the miracles,” replied his mother, “and I will give you a sort of clue. You know papa’s business is a very absorbing one, and you often hear people wondering how he finds time for all the other things he does, but I never wonder; it seems to me that he gives all his time to the Master, and that he is so free from worrying care—so sure he will have time enough for all that is really needful, that he loses none in fretting or hesitating; he just goes right on. There is a dear old saying of the Friends that I always like—‘Proceed as the way opens.’ Now if you will think about it, and about how uses for money, and for all our gifts and talents, come in some way to all who are in earnest about using them rightly, perhaps you will see what I mean. ‘A heart at leisure from itself’ can do a truly wonderful amount of work for other people.”
A dim idea of his mother’s meaning had come into Johnny’s mind, even then, and suddenly, after he had done work which he had thought would fill half an hour, in fifteen minutes, a flash of light followed, and he “saw plainly.”
I cannot tell you of all the small chances which came to him daily, but many of them you can guess by looking for your own. He tried hard to remember what his mother had said about willing service and cheerful giving. “Oh bother!” was not heard very often, now, and when it was, it was generally followed speedily by some “little deed of kindness” which showed that it had been repented of.
He was rushing home from school one day in one of his “cyclones,” as Tiny called the wild charges which he made upon the house when he was really in a hurry. It was a half-holiday, and most of the boys had agreed to go skating together, just as soon as some ten or fifteen mothers could be brought within shouting distance. The ice was lasting unusually late, and the weather was delightfully clear and cold, but everybody knew that a thaw must come before long, in the nature of things, and everybody who skated felt that it really was a sort of duty to make the most of the doomed ice, while it lasted.
Johnny was like the Irishman’s gun in one respect—he could “shoot round a corner;” but he did not always succeed in hitting anything, as he did to-day. The anything, this time, happened to be Jim Brady, and as Jim was going very nearly as fast as Johnny was, neither had breath enough left, after the collision, to say anything for at least a minute. Then Jim managed to inquire, between his gasps,—
“Any lives lost on your side, Johnny?”