CHAPTER VIII.
"Freely ye have received, freely give."
Whether Tip felt it or not, there were some changes in his home. Mrs. Lewis, though worried and hurried and cross enough, still was not so much so as she had been.
The house was quieter, there was no cradle to rock, there were no baby footsteps to follow and keep out of danger; she had more time for sewing. Yet this very thing, the missing of the clinging arms about her neck, sometimes made her heavy heart vent itself in short, sharp words.
But Tip had astonished the family at home,—it didn't require wonderful changes to do it,—rather the change which they saw in him seemed wonderful.
The fire which she found ready made in the morning, the full pail of fresh water, the box: filled with wood, were all so many drops of honey to the tired mother's heart. The awkward pat of his father's pillow, which Tip now and then gave as he lingered to ask how he was, seemed so new and delightful to that neglected father's heart, that he lay on his hard bed and thought of it much all day.
Tip got on better at home than anywhere else; he had not so many temptations. He had been such a lawless, reckless boy, that they had all learned to leave him very much to himself, and, as not a great deal of his time was spent there, his trials at home were not many. As for Kitty, she did not cease to wonder what had happened to Tip; she perhaps felt the difference more than any one else, for it had been the delight of his life to tease her.
Now, from the time that he gathered his books, with the first sound of the school-bell, and hurried up the hill, until he returned at night, ready to split wood, hoe in the garden, or do any of the dozen things that he had never been known to do before, he was a never-failing subject of thought and wonderment to her. Watching him closely, the only thing she could finally settle on as the cause of the change which she found in him was, that he now went every Sabbath morning to the Sabbath school. The mystery must be hidden there. Having decided that matter, Kitty speedily resolved that she would go there herself, and see what they did. Many were the kind hearts that had tried to coax her into that same Sabbath school, and had failed. But this Saturday afternoon's gazing out of the window, with a wonderfully sober face, had ended in her exclaiming,—
"I say, mother, I want a needle and thread."
"What do you want with a needle and thread?" asked Mrs. Lewis, stirring away at some gruel in a tin basin, and not even glancing up.