“Aunt Sarah,” said pretty Cora, “do please tell me what was in Tommy’s stocking that Christmas when he was a little boy. He won’t tell me, and I want to know.”
“You ought to know,” said Sarah. “We have always been ashamed of it, although we meant it to be only a joke, and never realized what we were doing. We did not understand how a child like Tommy might take it. We were doing pig work that Christmas, and”—Sarah laughed a little and colored—“we put in some pigs’ ears nicely wrapped up, and a pig’s tail, and a potato, and a turnip, and two beets.”
“Goodness!” said Cora.
“We were all ashamed of it,” said Aunt Sarah.
Cora went over and kissed her. “Don’t you worry one bit,” said she. “Maybe Tommy’s having such awful things in his stocking, poor little boy, made him better all his life. Perhaps his keeping still and not telling made him so honorable and honest. Aunt Sarah, it can’t have done Tommy much harm, for he is certainly about the best man who ever lived now.”
“He certainly is,” said Sarah, “but if I had to live over again, I wouldn’t try such a way of making him so, for my own sake.”
FOOTNOTES:
[18] By permission of the author and the “Woman’s Home Companion.”
THE SAD SHEPHERD[19]
Henry Van Dyke