“I was never happy until I came to you,” said Eugene; “and I shall never be happy away from you—I feel that.”
“Boy,” said the sergeant, “it isn’t your fault that you were a bit cantankerous. You were brought up wrong. I wonder the Lord lets some people have children. They don’t know how to train ’em, and yet it’s a hard thing to do. I hear a lot of talk nowadays about the perfectibility of human nature, but I don’t see much of it in my profession. Show me a baby boy, and I say there’s a bad one. Show me a baby girl, and I say there’s one not quite so bad. They’ve got to be drilled. Before I got to be as good even as I am now, my old father had to wallop me, and my mother had to pray and cry over me without ceasing. We’re born bad—that’s my doctrine; and we’re put here to improve our natures, so that we may be fit to live in another world by and by.”
“I like those words,” said Eugene thoughtfully; “and I believe them now, though once I would not have thought there was truth in them.”
“I guess they’re sound,” said the sergeant; “and though we’re not perfect, wife and I, we’ll try to teach you a few good things.”
“Oh! I have so much to tell you,” said Eugene, kissing Mrs. Hardy’s hands, and folding them to his breast, “so much. It seems a year since I left. I must tell you of New York, and how the poor curé was disturbed.”
“Get up and dress,” said the sergeant, “and come outside and talk to us. There’s some breakfast for you there. I looked out for that,” and putting his arm around his wife’s waist he drew her from the room.
“I’ve just fifteen minutes before I go to the park,” he cried, “I hope the little fellow will hurry.”
“He will,” said Mrs. Hardy. “Oh, thank God that we have him back again!”
“There’s a lot of comfort in children,” said the sergeant, “if you take them the right way; and I often wonder what the state of mind of real parents is like when a body can get so fond of children that don’t belong to him. Bess, we’ll try to bring that bairn up in the right way, and when we’re gone we won’t feel that we’ve left no one behind us in the world.”
* * * * *