A Flat Iron for a Farthing

her, as we soon discovered. In truth, at nine years old, she was a bit of an enthusiast. She read with avidity religious biographies furnished by Miss Blomfield. She was delicate in health, but ret

ud of my precocious benevolence. Whilst the subject was under discussion betwixt us, she related many anecdotes of the good deeds of the "young gentlemen and ladies" in a certain clergyman's family where she had lived as

over again. Keep them notions, my dear, when you're a grown gentleman, and there'll be a blessing on al

. He was well pleased to respond by substantial help when Nurse Bundle and I pleaded for this sick woman or that unshod child, as my mother had pleaded in old days. As for Nurse Bundle, she had a code of virtues for "

ively and amusing curiosity, which some little refinement and good-breeding

tterly. I stopped her, and asked what was the matter, and finally made out that she had been to some sale at a farmhouse near, where a certain large blanket had "gone for" five shillings. That she had scraped five shillings together, and had intended to bid for it, but h

blanket badly, for she had a boy sick in bed, and his throat was so bad-he suffered a deal from the cold, and there wasn't a decent "rag of a blanket" in her h

you live

ust beyond the gate,

ying the part of Sir Bountiful in the cottages. In this case, too, it was a kindness not to take the woman back to the hall, for she had left the

I'll fetch Mrs. Taylor to sit w

ed the child; "I be too hot as

hear, the whole history of the sale, her disappointment and subsequent relief, as a preliminary measure. After which it is probable that Mrs. Taylor had to look at her pie in the oven, or attend to some similar and pressing domestic duty before she could leave her house; and so it was nearly half an hour before they came to my relief. And all this time the sick boy tossed and moaned, and cried for water. I gave him some from a mug on the table, not so much from any precocious gift for sick nursing (for I was sim

e door," he muttered, im

out of me a helpfulness which necessity early teaches to the poor. I became dimly cognizant of the fact that water does not spring spontaneously in carafes, nor take a delicate colour and flavour in toast-and-water jug

ome way of my presence, and the boy's mother replied to her whispered remonstrance

got the blanket, and never c

t without complacency that I recounted to Nurs

mind; and her indignation with the woman who had requited my kindness by allowing me to go into a house infecte

unaccountable fatigue. At that time I was always either tired or cross, and sometimes both. I must have made Nurse Bundle very uncomfortable. I was so little happy, for my own share, th

at, and intolerable, consuming restlessness, I would have been glad to shiver again. And then my mind wandered with a restlessness more intolerable than the tossing of my body; and all boundaries of time, and place, and person became confuse