"Well, you are a naughty boy, Master Phil! Nurse is in a rare taking,
thinking you've gone and drownded yourself or got a sunstroke or
something. You deserve to be kept in bed all day, you bad child! And
I wish your pa was at home to whip you as well."
Poor little Phil trudges back by the side of the scolding maid, feeling
sobered and crestfallen. It has come upon him like a rough awakening
from a sweet sleep that what he has done may look like naughtiness in
the eyes of others.
Would they understand if he told them all about it?
But, then, if he told, it would spoil it all--for "gentlemen did kind
things, but never talked about them." Those were the very words father
had said. Father must know. He had been a gentleman all his life.
Choking down a rebellious sob of disappointment, the child faces nurse's
wrath with a brave heart. He says, "I'm very, very sorry, nursie," so
humbly, when her half-angry, half-tearful scolding is over, and his
winsome face looks so sweet in its unusual gravity, that her loving old
heart melts at once.
She hugs and kisses "her boy" again and again; telling him "not to go
and get into mischief like this, and never to give her such another
scare."
* * * * *
Three days later Phil's father comes home.
Nurse finds an early opportunity for telling him the story of his
little son's escapade, adding, however, a sequel of which Phil knows
nothing. For on the previous day, Dame Christy's daughter had sent up a
message to the nursery, "Might she trouble Mrs. Nurse to step downstairs
for a minute?"
And on her entering the housekeeper's room, she had displayed a large
handkerchief, having an artistic and warlike border of quarrelsome cats
and dogs. With tears in her eyes the young woman spoke of the dear
little master's gift and the hard labour it must have cost him.
"And we should never have knowed who did it, but for this, which told
the tale. For he came and went so quiet, that mother she thought it must
have been a dog as had got into her room, never speaking a word, and
coming right away without any one knowing! His handkercher I knowed
directly, 'cause he showed it to me only the other day. He's a rale
little gentleman, isn't he now?"
Nurse had wisely begged Dame Christy's daughter not to mention, or let
her mother speak of the gift, but to leave the child in happy ignorance
that his good deed had been discovered. She instinctively felt that "her
boy" who would "do good by stealth" would "blush to find it fame."
But now she tells her master all about it, dwelling with pardonable
pride on the "sweet nature of the bairn."
That same evening Phil's father stands by his boy's crib and looks down
at the bonny face as it lies on the pillow, while he strokes the curly
crop with a loving hand.
The blue eyes are just a little bit sleepy. Nurse has tucked him up
for the night, and drawn down the blind. But they are not too sleepy
to shine with love and admiration as they look up into the kind face
bending over him.
"So, my little son gave nurse a fright the other day?"
"Please, father, I'm _very_ sorry."
The child's lips quiver, but the soft eyes still look trustingly
upwards. "I was _really_ trying to be a gentleman--and--and you said
gentlemen didn't tell when they tried to be kind, didn't you?"
And now father quite understands the motive which has closed his child's
lips--the tender sense of manly honour, which, even in its early growth,
is strong enough to influence the heart of his boy.
That Phil is already "learning the luxury of doing good," and beginning
a chain of those "little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and
of love," which form "the best portion of a good man's life," fills his
heart with a glow of thankfulness.