"Mr. Evans himself was the only person in the family at school who really strove to do his duty by Bernard—he gave his heart to improve him; and he did get him on in his learning more than might have been expected. But there were too many things against the poor child to make it possible for him to improve his temper and his character.
"He went to school from the autumn until Christmas: at Christmas he was at home for a month, and made even his nurse long for the end of the holidays; and then he went again after the holidays, and continued to go every day till the spring appeared again. There was no intention then of changing the plan, though Mr. Low was not at all satisfied with him.
"Bernard was now become so cunning that he did not show the worst of his tempers before his father, nor even before his mother; but to his sister he appeared just as he
was, and he often made her very, very sad by his naughty ways.
"Lucilla was one of those young people who love God and all their fellow-creatures, and desire to do them good. She had always loved Bernard, and she loved him still, though she saw him getting more and more naughty from day to day. She believed, however, that he still loved her as well as he could love any person besides himself, and she thought a long time of some way which she might take to make him sensible of his faults.
"During that winter she had often spoken to him in her kind and gentle way, and shown him the certain end of evil behaviour; but she felt that he paid no more attention to her than he would have done to the buzzing of a fly; but now that the spring was come, and they could get out together into the fields and gardens and woods, before and after school-time, and on half-holidays, she thought she might have a better chance with him, and she formed a thousand plans for making the time they might thus pass together pleasant, before she could hit upon one which she thought might do.
"In a shadowy and sweet nook of the garden was an artificial piece of rock-work, which her mother, when first married, had caused to be made there, the fragments of rock having been brought from a little distance. There Lucilla, with the gardener's assistance, scooped a hollow place, a few feet square, and arranged a pretty little hermitage: dressing a doll like an old man, and painting a piece of glass to fix in the back of the hermitage, to look like the window of a chapel. She next sent and bought a few common tools, and thought, as Bernard was very fond of clipping and cutting, she could tempt him to work to help finish this hermitage. There was a root-house close to the place, where she thought they might
set to work at this business. 'And if I can but engage Bernard,' she said to herself, 'to use his fingers, I might perhaps now and then say something to soften him, and make him feel it is wrong to go on as he does.'
"Mr. Evans always gave a week's holiday at Whitsuntide, and Lucilla thought that this should be her time for trying what she could do with Bernard."