“‘I’m so sorry, mother,’ said Silky; ‘he won’t come.’
“She had hardly turned her back to see to something at the fire, when there he was behind her, standing in the middle of the floor; in no Sunday dress, but in his everyday rags, and those wet through and dripping. How glad and how sorry both mother and daughter looked! They brought him to the fire and wiped his feet, and wrung the water from his clothes as well as they could: but they didn’t know what to do; for the fire would not have dried him in all the day; and sit down to breakfast dry, with him soaking wet at her side, Mrs. Meadow could not. What to put on him was the trouble; she had no children’s clothes at all in the house. But she managed. She stripped off his rags, and tacked two or three towels about him; and then over them wound a large old shawl, in some mysterious way, fastening it over the shoulders: in such a manner that it fell round him like a loose straight frock, leaving his arms quite free. Then, when his jacket and trowsers had been put to dry, they sat down to breakfast.
“In his odd shawl wrapper, dry and warm, little Norman enjoyed himself, and liked very much his cup of weak coffee, and bread and butter, and the nice egg which Mrs. Meadow boiled for him. But he did not eat like a child whose appetite knew what to do with good things; he was soon done; though after it his face looked brighter and cheerier than it ever had done before in that house.
“Mrs. Meadow left Silky to take care of the breakfast things; and, drawing her chair up on the hearth, she took the little boy on her lap and wound her arms about him.
“‘Little Norman,’ said she kindly, ‘you won’t see Long Ears to-day.’
“‘No,’ said Norman, with a sigh, in spite of breakfast and fire,—‘he will have to go without me.’
“‘Isn’t it good that there is one day in the week when the poor little tired pin-boy can rest?’
“‘Yes—it is good,’ said Norman, quietly; but as if he was too accustomed to being tired to take the good of it.
“‘This is God’s day. Do you know who God is, Norman?’
“‘He made me,’ said Norman,—‘and every body.’