CHAPTER XII.
Proud children.—Edie.—Boys in Georgia.—John and Charles Wesley in the wrong.—Signal failure.—Disappointment.—Return to England.—Mr. Wesley finds out something on the voyage home.—An acrostic.
WONDER if my readers know any boys or girls who sneer and look down upon their school companions because they are not so well dressed as themselves? It is a cruel, unkind, un-Christ-like thing to do.
I remember seeing a little girl, and it was in a Sunday School too, who had on a new summer frock and a new summer hat; and oh! Edie did think she looked nice. She kept smoothing her frock down and looking at it, and then tossing her head. By her side sat a sweet-faced little girl about a year younger than Edie. Annie's dress was of print and quite plainly made, but very clean and tidy. After admiring herself a little while, Edie turned to Annie and thinking, I suppose, that she might be wearing a pinafore, and have a frock underneath, she rudely lifted it up, and finding it really was her dress, she turned away with a very ugly, disgusted look on her face, and said, scornfully "What a frock!" Proud, thoughtless boys and girls never know the hurts they give, and the harm they do.
The boys in Georgia were no better than some boys in England. At a school where one of the Methodists taught there were some poor boys who wore neither shoes nor stockings, and their companions who were better off taunted them and made their lives miserable. Their teacher did not know what to do, and asked Mr. Wesley for advice. "I'll tell you what we'll do," he said; "we'll change schools"—Mr. Wesley taught a school too—"and I'll see if I can cure them."