AT SUNDAY SCHOOL.
IT was not often that Gus could get away from the baby for a whole
afternoon; but on the following Sunday, he found himself once more at
liberty. Sally Dent had gone to visit a relative who lived in London,
and had taken the baby with her. So Gus started forth for a ramble
with a delightful sense of freedom. It was a lovely June day, lovely
with that first freshness of the summer, which in the neighbourhood of
London so quickly sullies.
Glensford looked its best on such a day. There were daisies and even
a few lingering buttercups in the fields; the hedges were green; the
stream, in which boys were bathing and paddling, rippled clear and
bright in the sunshine. It was warm enough to make the ice-creams,
which a man was selling at a corner of the green, very tempting to the
youth of the place.
Gus had seldom a penny in his pocket, so ice-creams were not for him.
He passed them by, turned his back on the boys noisily disporting
themselves in the stream, and walked off in the direction he had taken
with Lucas and his son a few days earlier. He thought he should like to
go over some of the ground again, and look at his leisure on the large
houses and pretty gardens along the road.
He found the way without difficulty. He saw much to interest him as
he went along. Numbers of bright, neat-looking children passed him
on their way to Sunday school. Some of them carried flowers in their
hands. Gus had never been to Sunday school, and he wondered as he heard
them talking what it could be like. Here and there a church bell was
tinkling to summon people to the afternoon service.
Gus walked on briskly for some time; but when he had gained the top of
a long hill, he felt hot and tired. Looking round, he saw on the left a
small iron building, about which a number of children were gathering,
like bees hovering and buzzing about a hive. Gus crossed the road and
stood by the palings watching them curiously, and they looked at him
with equal curiosity; but not one addressed him, for his clothes looked
so very old, whilst they were all arrayed in their "Sunday things."
But suddenly Gus felt a light touch on his shoulder, and turning, saw a
young lady standing beside him.
She was very pretty, with an abundance of fair hair neatly braided
beneath her white straw hat, and soft blue eyes that were looking at
him with the kindest of glances. They were indeed very like Gus' own
eyes; but he did not know that. He was accustomed to make his toilette
without the aid of a looking-glass, and had but the vaguest notion of
the appearance he presented to the world.
But as he gazed into the young lady's kind eyes, he had a confused
notion that he had seen them before. And trying to recall when and how
they had met, he hardly heeded the words she addressed to him.
"Why are you standing here, little boy? Will you not come into school?"
The sweet, gentle voice, too, seemed familiar. The next moment there
flashed on Gus a recollection of the day preceding his father's death,
the cart covered with flaring posters, and the frightened pony he had
led past it. This was the young lady who had driven the pony. He was so
surprised at the discovery that he stared at her without speaking.
"Won't you come in?" she said again. "Do; I am sure you will like it."
"I'll come if you like," Gus answered then, "but I don't know nothing
about it."
"That's right; come along."
And he followed her into the schoolroom, and to the corner where she
held her class, and where already several boys were seated. Most of
them were older, and all of them far more respectable in appearance
than Gus. In the conscious glory of Sunday coats and clean collars,
they looked askance at the little stranger their teacher brought with
her. They drew away from him as he entered, and nudged each other as
they eyed the rents in his garments.
Their teacher appeared unaware of the sensation the new scholar
created. She gave him a place beside her. Perhaps she saw that though
ragged, he was perfectly clean. Early that morning, when few other boys
were astir, and the water was deliciously fresh, Gus had taken a good
dip in the Glensford stream. It was his habit to do so every morning.
There were several other classes in the room, and for a while Gus was
too much interested in observing all that was going on and the strange
place in which he found himself, to be aware of the ill-will his
companions began to manifest towards him.
It was a pleasant room, with pictures on the walls, and prettily
coloured screens stood at hand, by which the classes would be
partitioned off from each other when the teaching began. But first the
superintendent, standing on a small platform at the end of the room,
gave out a hymn, which was sung, and then he prayed.
The prayer was not a comfortable time for Gus. First he received a
kick, and then a sharp pinch on the arm; and then some one inflicted
on him the peculiar torture which is caused by seizing a single hair
growing on a person's head, and tugging it out by one mighty pull.
In vain Gus tried to discover and avenge himself on his persecutors.
The boys were too quick for him, and all alike presented a devout
appearance the instant he turned.
When the class began to read the lesson, it appeared that Gus, despite
his poverty-stricken aspect, could read as well as any boy present, and
better than some of them could. The teacher praised his reading, and
the boys did not like him the better in consequence. Soon the young
lady perceived the treatment to which Gus was being slyly subjected.
"For shame, boys!" she said. "Is that the way to treat a stranger? I am
really ashamed. And I hoped I was going to make gentlemen of you."
Gus looked up quickly. Perhaps it was his vivid look of interest which
made her say the next moment:
"Now tell me, what is a gentleman?"
The answers were various. One boy said that a gentleman was a rich man;
another that he was one who knew a great deal; and a third suggested
that he was one who had good manners. He, the teacher told him, was
nearest to the truth.
"Because," said she, "truly good manners spring from a good heart.
No one who acts unkindly to another, no one who takes advantage of
the weak and helpless, no one who cheats and lies, is a gentleman. It
is the gentle heart that makes the gentleman. Love is the law of his
life. Oh, boys, the truest gentleman that ever lived was the Lord Jesus
Christ, and you must follow His example if you would deserve the name
of gentleman."
Gus listened eagerly. This was the kind of gentleman his father had
wished him to be. Dick was altogether wrong.
There was at least one attentive scholar in the school that
afternoon—one who missed no word that his teacher spoke of the love and
graciousness of the Lord Jesus Christ; one to whom the Gospel story
was not entirely new, but who saw for the first time that day what the
story meant for him.
Gus was sorry when the lesson came to an end, sorry when the last hymn
was sung, and the scholars began to pass out of the schoolroom. The
young lady asked him with a smile if he would not come again; but Gus
remembered the baby and shook his head. Just then a gentleman came
forward to claim her attention, and Gus slipped away, followed by a
gentle:
"Do come if you can."
Gus was full of thought as he took his way home. So the Lord Jesus
Christ was the one perfect gentleman whom he must imitate if he would
become a gentleman. There was a great deal about Him in the Bible, Gus
knew. He wished he had paid more attention in the days when he used to
read the Bible to his father. He wished he had that Bible again. What
had Sally Dent done with it? Would she give it him, he wondered, if he
were to ask her for it?
It was evening when Gus got back to Glensford. On a warm evening, when
the dwellers at Glensford yearned for a breath of cool air, they would
climb to the top of the sloping field to the right, which was already
half built over. There were many persons in the fields to-night, but
quite at the top of the high field, clearly outlined against the sky,
Gus saw Lucy seated alone. He hastened to join her.
Lucy did not see him till he was almost at her side. She sat motionless
upon the bank, gazing before her, and her face was sadder than ever,
Gus thought. The fresh breeze brought no glow to her cheek, nor could
the beauty of the sunset kindle gladness in her eyes. The view from
the top of the hill was very fine. Behind Lucy, shrouded by a veil of
smoke, London lay, but before her were meadows and hills, some of the
hills wooded, and some covered with houses, to which distance gave
picturesqueness, whilst immediately below lay the extensive cemetery
of Glensford. When Lucy saw Gus, she smiled; but it was a poor little
smile, which only seemed to emphasise the sadness of her eyes.
"Where have you been, Gus?" she asked. "I have seen nothing of you all
the afternoon."
"I have been a long way," said Gus, with some importance; "right over
there where you see those houses. And I have been to Sunday school."
"To Sunday school!" said Lucy surprised.
"A young lady asked me to come in, and she looked so nice and kind that
I thought I would, just to see what 'twas like."
"And how did you like it?"
"Very much," said Gus; "though the boys led me a pretty life at first.
I meant to give them something for themselves when we got outside, but
somehow I didn't. It seemed to me more gentlemanly to take no notice of
them."
"You are right," said Lucy, smiling. "Oh, Gus, I'm so glad you're not
like those horrid boys who are always fighting and quarrelling. Do you
know, I used to go to Sunday school once?"
"Did you?"
"Yes; it was when my mother was living." And Lucy's face grew sadder
than before.
"She is dead now?"
"Yes, she died five years ago. Gus, since I have been sitting here and
looking down there—" she pointed in the direction of the cemetery—"I
have been wishing that I too could die; it would be so good to lie
there beneath the trees and rest for ever."
"Oh, Lucy, why should you say that?"
"Because I am always so tired," she replied; "so tired and full of
trouble. There was a man here in the fields this afternoon. He had a
harmonium, and he played and sang to the people about there being sweet
rest in heaven. And he talked about Jesus, and how He would forgive us
our sins and take us to heaven if we asked Him; but somehow I didn't
seem to care. I don't know as I want to go to heaven; but I do long to
lie still and be at rest."
"But what would your father do without you, Lucy? Think how it would
grieve him if you died."
"Yes, I suppose it would," she said sadly.
"Of course it would," replied Gus, almost indignantly; "why, there
isn't anything he wouldn't do for you. He is always buying things for
you. There isn't another girl—"
"Oh, Gus, I know!" she interrupted him, with fresh sadness in look and
tone. "But I'd gladly give them up. I'd gladly live on dry bread and go
bare-foot if only I could be sure—that things were honestly come by."
She said the last words very low, as if speaking to herself; but Gus
heard them.
He started, and looked up at her with consternation painted on his face.
"Oh, Lucy, you don't mean—"
"Hush, hush!" she whispered, turning on him a white, frightened face.
"What did I say? I should not have said it. Don't think of it again,
Gus. I did not mean anything, indeed."
"Lucy, you might tell me."
"There is nothing to tell; indeed I know nothing, only I am full of
fear. Please, Gus, never speak of this again. And now come in with
me, and I will give you some supper. Father and Jack will not be home
till late. Do come and cheer me. You shall tell me about the lesson at
Sunday school, and we can read about it in mother's Bible. I have her
Bible, but I seldom read it, because it makes me so sad to think that I
shall never read it to her again."
Gus willingly consented. He said little as they went down the field,
Lucy moving slowly and with difficulty. He was overpowered by the
astounding conviction which had come to him. The doubts suggested by
the affair of the bad florin had received unexpected confirmation. He
felt sure now that Lucas was a dishonest man.