“Oh, you are good—good!,” he said: “I wish I were your Boy!”
Miss Letty patted him with a trembling hand—but was silent.
The bees buzzed drowsily in the heather bells,—the blue sky was flecked with beautiful white clouds, and the lights and shadows changed the aspect of the mountains every few minutes. A little “burnie” chattered at their feet, gurgling over the stones and pebbles, and chuckling among the ferns and grasses, and over its silver ribbon-like streak two gorgeous dragon-flies chased each other, the sunlight flashing gold upon their iridescent wings.
“I wish I could stay with you altogether,” said Boy, taking off his cap and ruffling his pretty fair hair with his hands in a sort of nervous agitation—“I feel so happy with you! See how lovely it all is to-day!—God seems really good out here!”
“God is really good always, darling,” said Miss Letty.
“Yes, I suppose He is—but where we are He doesn’t seem good a bit. The people are dirty and miserable and poor,—and even the sea looks cruel!”
“Poor Boy!” murmured Miss Letty to herself, quickly understanding the sense of loneliness and bitterness which sometimes overpowered the child’s mind. Aloud she said, as cheerily as she could,—
“That’s only fancy, Boy! Everything is good and beautiful in the world as God made it and intended it to be; it’s only the bad dispositions and wickednesses of men that make things seem difficult. But if you are good and straightforward everything will come right, and you will perhaps understand why you are sometimes a little bit sad and lonely now. I daresay it’s all for the best....” She paused, because in her own clear soul she could not think it was quite for the best that the little fellow should have a drunken father and a sloven mother. “Promise me one thing, Boy,” she went on,—“Never tell a lie. Liars come to no good,—and when you go to school—for I expect you will go to school—you will find that all nice English boys are brought up to be frank and true, and to stand upon their honour. If a boy tells a lie to shield himself, he is looked upon as a coward by all his school-fellows. Remember that! No matter what scrapes you get into, tell the truth right out, without the least fear, and you may be sure you are doing well. Even if you get punished, a day’s punishment is much better than a lie on your conscience.”
Boy listened reverently.
“I’ll remember,” he said.