As soon as Dick had finished he took her out into the dreary little garden and tried to pacify her. She was generally good with him, but the heat, and teething, had made her fretful, and he had to walk up and down the cinder path till his arms ached almost beyond bearing. She went to sleep at last, and Dick sat down and took a tattered book from his pocket and began to read once more the story of Richard the King.
It was the story that he loved best in the history lessons, for his own name was Richard Hart Crosby, and the fancy had come into his life like a sunbeam, that he might be Richard Lionheart too.
There were no books in the Fowleys' kitchen, and none of the children went to Sunday school regularly. Just for a week or two before the annual treat, or Christmas tree, they would go in great force, but Dick could not be spared.
But he had one other little book that was kept as a hidden treasure—his mother's Bible, that she had left to him. And in that he had learned how to be a true Lionheart and a good soldier of Jesus Christ. And every day he managed to read a few verses at least.
Now, as the sultry afternoon wore away, and the baby still slept, he thought again and again of the discovery he had made, that he did not really belong to the Fowleys.
"I have tried to please them and be brave and do my duty because they've given me a home," he reasoned to himself, "but perhaps if they had money when father died, I'm not beholden after all, as they always say I am. And oh, I would like to find a real relation! And isn't it good of Paddy to get that dear little Pat for me? I must wait till he is big enough to go too, and then I can have him for my very, very own."
Dick was thirteen, and small for his age, but his mental powers were keen, and he knew that if he stayed with the Fowleys he would have no chance to get on in life.
And looking up into the blue summer sky, he prayed to his heavenly Father to help him to get away.