"But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit."
Tip Lewis yawned and stretched, and finally opened his eyes rather late
on Monday morning.
"Oh, bother!" he said, with another yawn, when he saw how the sun was
pouring into the room; "I suppose a fellow has got to get up. I wish
getting up wasn't such hard work,--spoils all the fun of going to bed;
but then the old cat will be to pay, if I don't get around soon."
And with this he rolled out; and when he was dressed, which was in a very
few minutes after he tumbled out of his ragged bed, he was the self-same
Tip who had been at the bottom of most of the mischief in Miss Perry's
class the day before,--the very same, from the curly hair, not yet
combed nor likely to be, down to the bare, soiled feet.
The bed which he had just left, so far as neatness was concerned, looked
very much like Tip, and the room looked like the bed; and they all looked
about as badly as dust and rags and poverty could make them look.
After running his fingers through his hair, by way of finishing his
toilet, Tip made his way down the rickety stairs to the kitchen.
It seemed as though that kitchen was just calculated to make a boy feel
cross. The table stood against the wall on its three legs, the
tablecloth was daubed with molasses and stained with gravy; a plate,
with something in it which looked like melted lard, but which Tip's
mother called butter, and a half loaf of bread, were the only eatable
articles as yet on the table; and around these the flies had gathered in
such numbers, that it almost seemed as though they might carry the loaf
away entirely, if too many of them didn't drown themselves in the
butter. Over all the July sun poured in its rays from the eastern
window, the only one in the room.
Tip stumbled over his father's boots, and made his way to the stove,
where his mother was bending over a spider of sizzling pork.
"Well," she said, as he came near, "did you get up for all day? I'd be
ashamed--great boy like you--to lie in bed till this time of day, and let
your mother split wood and bring water to cook your breakfast with."
"You cooked, a little for you, too, didn't you?" asked Tip, in a saucy,
good-natured tone. "Where's father?"
"Just where you have been all day so far,--in bed and asleep. Such folks
as I've got! I'm sick of living."
And Mrs. Lewis stepped back from the steaming tea-kettle, and wiped great
beads of perspiration from her forehead; then fanned herself with her big
apron, looking meantime very tired and cross.
Yet Tip's mother was not so cross after all as she seemed; had Tip only
known it, her heart was very heavy that morning. She did not blame his
father for his morning nap, not a bit of it; she was only glad that the
weary frame could rest a little after a night of pain. She had been up
since the first grey dawn of morning, bathing his head, straightening the
tangled bedclothes, walking the floor with the restless baby, in order
that her husband might have quiet. Oh no; there were worse women in the
world than Mrs. Lewis; but this morning her life looked very wretched to
her. She thought of her idle, mischievous boy; of her naughty,
high-tempered little girl; of her fat, healthy baby, who took so much of
her time; of her husband, who, though she never said it to him, or even
to herself, yet she knew and felt was every day growing weaker; and with
these came the remembrance that her own tired hands were all that lay
between them and want; and it is hardly a wonder that her voice was sharp
and her words ill chosen. For this mother tried to bear all her trials
alone; she never went for help to the Redeemer, who said,--
"Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden."
"Wah!" said Johnny, from his cradle in the bit of a bedroom near the
kitchen,--which kitchen was all the room they had, save two tiny bedrooms
and Tip's little den up-stairs.
Mrs. Lewis glanced quickly towards the door of her husband's room; it was
closed. Then she called,--
"Kitty, make that baby go to sleep!"
"Oh yes!" muttered Kitty, who sat on the floor lacing her old shoe with a
white cord; "it's easy to say that, but I'd just like to see you do it."
"Ah yah!" answered Johnny from the cradle, as though he tried to say, "So
should I."
Then, not being noticed, he gave up pretending to cry, and screamed in
good earnest, loud, positive yells, which brought his mother in haste
from the kitchen.
"Ugly girl!" she said to Kitty, as she lifted the conquering hero from
his cradle; "you don't care how soon your father is waked out of the only
nap he has had all night. Why didn't you rock the cradle? I've a notion
to whip you this minute!"
"I did," answered Kitty sulkily; "and he opened his eyes at me as wide as
he could stretch them."
Crash! went something at that moment in the kitchen; and, with Johnny in
her arms, Mrs. Lewis ran back to see what new trouble she had to meet.
Tip, meantime, had been in business; being hungry, he had cut a slice of
bread from the loaf, and, in the act of reaching over to help himself to
some butter, hit his arm against a pitcher of water standing on the
corner of the table. Over it went and broke, just as pitchers will
whenever they get a chance. This was too much for the tired mother's
patience; what little she had vanished. She tossed the slice of bread at
Tip, and as she did so, said,--
"There! take that and be off. Don't let me see a sight of your face
again to-day. March this instant, or you will wish you had!"
And in the midst of the din, while his mother looked after the pork,
which had seized this occasion for burning fast to the spider, Tip
managed to spread his slice of bread, find his hat, and make good his
escape from the comfortless home.
There was an hour yet to school-time; or, for the matter of that, he
might have the whole day. Tip went to school, or let it alone, just as he
pleased. He made his way straight to his favourite spot, the broad, deep
pond, and laid himself down on its grassy bank to chat with the fishes.
"My!" he said; "how nice they look whisking about. It's cool down there,
I know; they don't mind the sun. I wish I had my fish-pole here, I'd have
one of them shiny big fellows there for my dinner; only it's too hot to
fish, and it would seem kind of mean, besides, to get him up here in this
blazing sun. Hang me if I make even a fish get out of the water to-day,
when it can stay in!"
Of all the scholars in Miss Perry's class, the one who she would have
said paid the least attention was this same boy who was lying on his face
by the pond, envying the fishes. Yet Tip had heard nearly every word she
said; and now, as he looked into the water, which lay cool in the shade
of some broad, branching trees, there came into his heart the music of
those words again,--
"Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat."
"I declare," he said, as the meaning of those words dawned upon him, "I'd
like that! they'll never be too warm again. It was a pretty nice story
she told us about that boy. He couldn't have had a very good time; his
father was a drunkard. I wish I knew just about what kind of a fellow he
was; he turned right square round after that man talked to him. Now he is
a minister; I suppose lots of people like him. It must be kind of nice,
the whole of it. I would like to be somebody, as true as I live, I would.
I'd like to have the people say, 'There goes Tip Lewis; he's the best boy
in town.' Bless me! that would be funny; I don't believe they could ever
say it; they are so used to calling me the worst, they couldn't help it.
What if I should reform? I declare I don't know but I will."
And Tip rolled over on his back, and looked up into the blue, cloudless
sky; lying there, he certainly had some of the most sober thoughts,
perhaps the only really sober ones he had ever known in his life. And
when at last he slowly picked himself up, turned his back upon the
darting fishes, and walked towards the school-house, he had in his mind
some vague notion that perhaps he would be different from that time
forth. Just what he was going to do, or how to commence doing it, he
didn't know; but the story, to which he had seemed not to listen at all,
had crept into his heart, had commenced its work; very dimly was it
working, very blindly he might grope for a while, but the seed sown had
taken root.