“Now, this way, Loney; both ends at the same time. One this way and one that way. Oh, you will succeed if you keep on. You’ll be as good a shoemaker as father some day.”
“I’m trying, Dora. I try so hard, but my hands won’t mind me. I’m just no good at all.”
This the child said with such an expression of utter discouragement that Dora put her plump arm around the little figure, saying:
“Oh, yes you are, Loney. You do lots of things, and you are splendid for errands.”
“Anybody can run errands; but I want to be something else than an errand-boy. I want to know how to do other things—how to be something in the world, but my head won’t let me. It gets all ‘hurty’ when I try to think what I want to do.”
“Poor little Loney! Tell me how you got hurt, Loney? You have never told me that. Can’t you tell me now? Maybe the doctor could cure it if we knew how it happened. Try to remember.”
The poor, thin little hand went to his head uncertainly, while Loney knitted his brows trying to remember. Then he said; dreamily:
“Sometimes I can think it out right, and sometimes I can’t. I remember I had a mother once—pretty, like you—but different. She had light hair and such nice blue eyes. She was awful pretty. And I had a father, too; and he was big and handsome. We used to ride in a carriage. Sometimes I can remember the big Park, and all the people walking around and in carriages, and then I forget. Then I remember that my father quarreled a lot with my mother and she cried lots, and one day he was going to hit her, and I ran between them and he struck me instead. Then something fell out of my head that they remember with. I guess it was when the blood ran so. Don’t you think so?”
“Poor boy! Poor little Loney!” said Dora, while great tears ran down her rosy cheeks and fell on the bright curls of the little waif. He continued, after a short silence:
“The next I remember, I was in a place where there were lots of children. I was there a long time. Then I wanted my mother so bad that I ran away. They searched for me and nearly found me, but I hid in a box, and one of the men said, ‘Let him go. He hasn’t any sense, anyway.’”