”‘Oh, Charlie,’ he said, ‘my poor little boy! Have you been waiting here all these hours—my good, obedient, little son?’
“Then he turned to the shopman who was now a little ashamed of himself—I dare say the poor man had been getting really afraid that I was to be left on his hands altogether—and explained the whole mistake. He had gone straight on to the city after finishing his orders in the other part of the shop, forgetting that the last thing he had said to me was to wait for him at the front door of the shop; for his thoughts were very much taken up that morning with some very serious business, and it was actually not till he got back to the hotel, late in the afternoon, and found I wasn’t there, that he remembered that the plan of my running back alone had been given up.
“Then he was terribly frightened and rushed off to the shop, hardly daring to hope he would find me still there. He kept saying he could scarcely forgive himself, and even years after, I often heard him say that he couldn’t understand what had come over his memory that day.
“When the shop people saw how troubled he was about it, they began telling him how they had tried to make me come inside, but that it had been no use, and all the way home papa kept saying to me—
”‘My faithful little Charlie’—which pleased me very much.
“He carried me to the hotel, and I felt so weak and tired that I didn’t mind, even though I was a big boy of six years old. And I remember, even now, how delightful it was to get well warmed at the fire, and what a nice tea papa ordered for me.
“And the next day I was none the worse; luckily I hadn’t caught cold, which papa was very glad of, as my mother came up to London that day to meet us, and we all three travelled home together.”
The children had been listening with all their ears to papa’s story. When he stopped Mary gave a deep sigh.
“That’s a bee-yu-tiful story, papa,” she said. “But it nearly made me cry for the poor little boy.”
“You shouldn’t say that, Mary,” said Leigh. “The poor little boy was papa himself! Don’t you understand?”