ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES ANOTHER.
Tim Sullivan started from the town with a heavy heart, but as he left the smoke and noise behind him, the pleasant sunshine and fresh autumn breeze soon began to work a change in his spirits. It was good to see green fields again, and he wished he could walk on and on, and never return to the town life he disliked so much.
After all, what was to prevent him? His uncle had been reproaching him that very morning for his idleness at school, and had told him he would never be worth anything in the office.
'It is high time you were beginning to be of some use,' he had said. 'I did not bargain to keep you for nothing when I took you in on your father's death.'
And poor Tim knew it was hard on his uncle to have this addition to his large family. He really did try to get on at school, but it was no good. He could not learn, and the harder he tried the more stupid he seemed to grow.
Before the death of his parents, when he lived such a happy life on the little farm in Ireland, it was not so noticeable that he was not quite like other boys. Lessons were not held of much account there, and no boy of his age could have been more useful than Tim in all farm, field, or garden work; so that it was a new experience for the poor boy to be taunted with his uselessness and stupidity, and it caused him great unhappiness.
As he trudged along, a familiar grunt suddenly made him feel he must be in old Ireland again. He looked round and saw a pig rooting in the ditch by the side of the road.
'Has he got astray?' he asked a man who was breaking stones close by.
'Likely enough,' was the answer. 'Farmer Smale's man was driving home pigs from market yesterday, and I thought as he passed he was getting a bit old for work—and pigs are uncommon difficult to drive too.'