They reached the school, and Mr. Eden sat down and examined the little boys and girls. When he sat down Susan winced. How angry he will be at their ignorance! thought Susan. But Mr. Eden, instead of putting on an awful look, and impressing on the children that a being of another generation was about to attack them, made himself young to meet their minds. A pleasant smile disarmed their fears. He spoke to them in very simple words and childish idioms, and told them a pretty story, which interested them mightily. Having set their minds really working, he put questions arising fairly out of his story, and so fathomed the moral sense and the intelligence of more than one. In short, he drew the brats out instead of crushing them in. Susan stood by, at first startled at the line he took, then observant, then approving. Presently he turned to her.
“And which is your class, Miss Merton?”
Susan colored.
“I take these little girls when I come, sir.
“Miss Merton has not been here this fortnight,” said a pert teacher.
Susan could have beat her. What will this good man think of me now? thought poor Susan. To her grateful relief, the good man took no notice of the observation; he looked at his watch.
“Now, Miss Merton, if I am not giving you too much trouble,” and they left the school.
“You wish to see some of the folk in the village, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Where shall I take you first, sir?”
“Where I ought to go first.”
Susan looked puzzled.
Mr. Eden stopped dead short.
“Come, guess,” said he, with a radiant smile, “and don't look so scared. I'll forgive you if you guess wrong.”
Susan looked this way and that, encouraged by his merry smile. She let out—scarce above a whisper, and in a tone of interrogation, as who should say this is not to be my last chance since I have only asked a question not risked an answer—
“To the poorest, Mr. Eden?”
“Brava! she has guessed it,” cried the Reverend Frank triumphantly; for he had been more anxious she should answer right than she had herself. “Young lady, I have friends with their heads full of Latin and Greek who could not have answered that so quickly as you; one proof more how goodness brightens intelligence,” added he in soliloquy. “Here's a cottage.”
“Yes, sir, I was going to take you into this one, if you please.”
They found in the cottage a rheumatic old man, one of those we alluded to as full of his own complaints. Mr. Eden heard these with patience, and then, after a few words of kind sympathy and acquiescence, for he was none of those hard humbugs who tell a man that old age, rheumatism and poverty are strokes with a feather, he said quietly:
“And now for the other side; now tell me what you have to be grateful for.”
The old man was taken aback and his fluency deserted him. On the question being repeated, he began to say that he had many mercies to be thankful for. Then he higgled and hammered and fumbled for the said mercies, and tried to enumerate them, but in phrases conventional and derived from tracts and sermons; whereas his statement of grievances had been idiomatic.
“There, that will do,” said Mr. Eden smiling, “say nothing you don't feel; what is the use? May I ask you a few questions,” added he, courteously; then, without waiting for permission, he dived skillfully into this man's life, and fished up all the pearls—the more remarkable passages.
Many years ago this old man had been a soldier, had fought in more than one great battle, had retreated with Sir John Moore upon Corunna, and been one of the battered and weary but invincible band who wheeled round and stunned the pursuers on 'that bloody and glorious day. Mr. Eden went with the old man to Spain, discussed with great animation the retreat, the battle, the position of the forces, and the old soldier's personal prowess. Old Giles perked up, and dilated, and was another man; he forgot his rheumatism, and even his old age. Twice he suddenly stood upright as a dart on the floor, and gave the word of command like a trumpet in some brave captain's name; and his cheek flushed, and his eye glittered with the light of battle. Susan looked at him with astonishment. Then when his heart was warm and his spirits attentive Mr. Eden began to throw in a few words of exhortation. But even then he did not bully the man into being a Christian; gently, firmly, and with a winning modesty, he said: “I think you have much to be thankful for, like all the rest of us. Is it not a mercy you were not cut off in your wild and dissolute youth? you might have been slain in battle.”
“That I might, sir; three of us went from this parish and only one came home again.
“You might have lost a leg or an arm, as many a brave fellow did; you might have been a cripple all your days.”
“That is true, sir.”
“You survive here in a Christian land, in possession of your faculties; the world, it is true, has but few pleasures to offer you—all the better for you. Oh, if I could but make that as plain to you as it is to me. You have every encouragement to look for happiness there, where alone it is to be found. Then courage, corporal; you stood firm at Corunna—do not give way in this your last and most glorious battle. The stake is greater than it was at Vittoria, or Salamanca, or Corunna, or Waterloo. The eternal welfare of a single human soul weighs a thousand times more than all the crowns and empires in the globe. You are in danger, sir. Discontent is a great enemy of the soul. You must pray against it—you must fight against it.”
“And so I will, sir; you see if I don't.”
“You read, Mr. Giles?” Susan had told Mr. Eden his name at the threshold.
“Yes, sir; but I can't abide them nasty little prints they bring me.”
“Of course you can't. Printed to sell, not to read, eh? Here is a book. The type is large, clear and sharp. This is an order-book, corporal. It comes from the great Captain of our salvation. Every sentence in it is gold; yet I think I may safely pick out a few for your especial use at present.” And Mr. Eden sat down, and producing from his side pockets, which were very profound, some long thin slips of paper, he rapidly turned the leaves of the Testament and inserted his markers; but this occupation did not for a moment interrupt his other proceedings.
“There is a pipe—you don't smoke, I hope?”
“No, sir; leastways not when I han't got any baccy, and I've been out of that this three days—worse luck.”
“Give up smoking, corporal, it is a foul habit.”
“Ah, sir! you don't ever have a half-empty belly and a sorrowful heart, or you wouldn't tell an old soldier to give up his pipe.”
“Take my advice. Give up all such false consolation, to oblige me, now.”
“Well, sir, to oblige you, I'll try; but you don't know what his pipe is to a poor old man full of nothing but aches and pains, or you wouldn't have asked me,” and old Giles sighed. Susan sighed, too, for she thought Mr. Eden cruel for once.
“Miss Merton,” said the latter sternly, his eye twinkling all the time, “he is incorrigible; and I see you agree with me that it is
