“I feel very proud to think you chose that, and to hear you say it as if it meant something to you. I was only thirteen when I wrote it, but it came right out of my heart, and did me good. I hope it may help you a little.”
Ben murmured that he guessed it would, but felt too shy to talk about such things before Thorny, so hastily retired to put the chair away, and the others went in to tea. But later in the evening, when Miss Celia was singing like a nightingale, the boy slipped away from sleepy Bab and Betty to stand by the syringa-bush and listen, with his heart full of new thoughts and happy feelings, for never before had he spent a Sunday like this. And when he went to bed, instead of saying “Now I lay me,” he repeated the third verse of Miss Celia’s hymn, for that was his favorite, because his longing for the father whom he had seen made it seem sweet and natural now to love and lean, without fear, upon the Father whom he had not seen.
(To be continued.)
THE SWALLOW.
By Nathan Haskell Dole.
Of all the birds that swim the air
I’d rather be the swallow;
And, summer days, when days were fair,
I’d follow, follow, follow
The hurrying clouds across the sky,
And with the singing winds I’d fly.