"I was disappointed in you, Bert. I was very much disappointed in you."
Down went Bert's head into his hands.
"But now," continued his father, placing one hand upon his shoulder, "now I have my honest boy again, and I am proud of him. I do consider you worth a dozen floggings, Bert; but I have no disposition to give them to you."
Bert wrung his father's hand and rushed out into the rain. Cuff came running to meet him, and Prince barked with pleasure at his approach. Billy whistled and sung in his cage above, and old Snow's voice was heard in the field close by.
Bert loved them and they knew it. It was some minutes, however, before he noticed them now; and when he did, it was not in his accustomed merry way.
"Just like the monitors at school," said he, seriously. "Making such a fuss that a fellow can't go wrong, if he wants to." And he took Cuff up in his lap, and patted Prince's shaggy coat.
Bert's monitors still watch him with affectionate interest; but never again, I am happy to say, has he felt the least inclination to disturb their midnight slumbers.
A MORNING THOUGHT
With every rising of the sun
Think of your life as just begun.
The past has shrivelled and buried deep,
All yesterdays. There let them sleep,
Nor seek to summon back one ghost
Of that innumerable host.
Concern yourself with but to-day,
Woo it, and teach it to obey
Your will and wish. Since time began
To-day has been the friend of man;
But in his blindness and his sorrow
He looks to yesterday and to-morrow.