"Don't bring any, then. I would rather not have any dinner than have you tell a lie."
Harry would not always have been so nice about a lie; but for the little angel to tell a falsehood, why, it seemed like mud on a white counterpane.
"I won't tell a lie, but you shall have your dinner. I suppose I must go now."
Harry watched the retreating form of his kind friend, till she disappeared beyond the curve of the path, and his blessing went with her.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH HARRY FARES SUMPTUOUSLY, AND TAKES LEAVE OF THE LITTLE ANGEL
When Harry could no longer see the little angel, he fixed his eyes upon the ground, and continued to think of her. It is not every day that a pauper boy sees an angel, or even one whom the enthusiasm of the imagination invests with angelic purity and angelic affections.
In the records of individual experience, as well as in the history of the world, there are certain points of time which are rendered memorable by important events. By referring to a chronological table, the young reader will see the great events which have marked the progress of civilized nations from the lowest depths of barbarism up to their present enlightened state. Every individual, if he had the requisite wisdom, could make up a list of epochs in his own experience. Perhaps he would attach too little importance to some things, too much to others; for we cannot always clearly perceive the influences which assist in forming the character. Some trivial event, far back in the past, which inspired him with a new reverence for truth and goodness, may be forgotten. The memory may not now cherish the look, the smile of approbation, which strengthened the heart, when it was struggling against the foe within; but its influence was none the less potent. "It is the last pound which breaks the camel's back;" and that look, that smile, may have closed the door of the heart against a whole legion of evil spirits, and thus turned a life of woe and bitterness into a life of sunshine and happiness.
There are hundreds of epochs in the experience of every person, boy or man—events which raised him up or let him down in the scale of moral existence. Harry West had now reached one of these epochs in his pilgrimage.