“But my name is not Sally Sunbeam, uncle,” she said. “My name is Sally Brown.”
Her mamma smiled. “It is only your uncle’s fun,” she said.
“Well, it is only my fun,” said Uncle Tom. “But it’s a very proper name for her, for all that. She is more like a sunbeam than anything else. So come along, Sally Sunbeam. Let us go and have a nice walk.”
And from that time Uncle Tom never called her by any other name. And other people came to call her by it too, and everybody felt that it was as true and fitting a name for her as ever a child could have.
Here she is in our picture, hanging up her doll’s clothes, that she has just washed. How bright and happy she looks! Uncle Tom may well call her Sally Sunbeam. But it is not only her cheerfulness and playfulness that makes her worthy of her name. This, of itself, would not be sufficient to make her loved as she is loved. Oh no! It is the kindness of her heart, the gentleness of her disposition, the delight she takes in trying to make everybody happy. This is what makes everybody love her.
Only the other day a group of several children passed the garden gate on their way from school. There was one poor little thing amongst them whose dress was so shabby and whose shoes were so bad as to make it evident that her parents must be very, very poor.
Sad to say, her schoolfellows were jeering her and teasing her about her appearance. One of these especially was taunting her very cruelly, and the poor child was crying. Sally ran out to her, and putting her arm lovingly round her said,
“What is the matter, dear? What do you cry for?”
“Because they keep on laughing at me so,” sobbed the child.
“Well, who can help laughing at her?” cried the girl who had been teasing her the most. “Look at her shoes! Do you call those shoes?”