Eglanton Thorne

“ The unlovely life of the street in which Bert lived was being carried on mainly out of doors. The noise of brawling and strife, the shrill voices of children mingling with the cries of street vendors, made a continual hubbub there. Bert, having just returned from selling papers, sat at the top of the area steps with his back to the street, gazing down sadly at the empty room which had been occupied by Mr. Corney and Cetywayo. It was growing dusk, but the noise in the street only increased as daylight faded. ”

“ Bert did not reply immediately. When he spoke it was with evident reluctance.
"He is our Lord," he said, "and He died for us."
"Yes, He died that we might be saved from sin. Was not that love? Have we another friend like Him?"
Bert shook his head. He was silent for a minute. Then he ventured to put a question.
"What is sin?" he asked.
"Sin!" said Mr. Corney, surprised at the question. "Sin is the worst thing in the world. It is that which makes all the misery of this world."
"Yes; but what is it?" asked Bert.
The old sailor looked at him with a puzzled expression. ”

“ Really, I never thought till now how difficult it is to say what sin means, and yet, I know! I know! Sin, it seems to me, is just loving ourselves instead of God, and doing what pleases ourselves instead of what pleases God."
"But how can we know what pleases God?" asked Bert, with wonder in his eyes.
"Oh, in many ways. There's a little voice in our hearts that warns us when we are going to do what is wrong; and then there is Jesus Christ to show us what God would have us to be. He is our example, our copy, you know. You write copies at school, don't you?" ”

“ Corney, or, as he now signed his letters, "Cornelius Theophilus Grant." His hopes for his sister were fulfilled, and she too was climbing the ladder and trampling under foot the sins of the past, strengthened by the Mighty Friend, whose hand she grasped as she toiled upward.
Bert could never forget the experiences of his childhood, nor lose his vivid consciousness of the evil that ruins human lives. His strongest desire as he grew up was to fight that evil—the evil within as well as that without—trusting for the victory to Him, whose is the "kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever." ”

“ The old sailor's face brightened with a beaming smile as he shook his head and said,—
"Not He. Neither our rags nor our sins can separate us from the love of Christ. He is not ashamed to call us His brothers."
The thought dropped like balm on Bert's wounded spirit. Long after Mr. Corney had gone, the refrain of his hymn,—
"'I've found a Friend, oh, such a Friend!'"
Rang on in Bert's heart. ”

“ Bert was not conscious of weakness. A broken bone is not like a disease; he had eaten and slept well during his stay in the hospital, and having had much more nourishing food than he was able to provide for himself, he had gained rather than lost strength since his accident. He felt in no hurry to reach the miserable street in which he lived, though he anticipated with pleasure the welcome he would receive from the old sailor. ”

“ I never can bear to see a drunken woman. It's bad enough for a man to get drunk; but for a woman, it's an awful fall. Well, when I came to look at her, this was the very woman I saw on Jubilee Day—the one that was taken away on a stretcher, you know."
"Yes—Mrs. Kay," said Bert, full of interest, as he saw what was coming.
"Ay, that was what you called her—her name is really Mackay. I thought her like my sister then; but oh! The horror of it! She is my sister—my sister, Priscilla Mackay, whom I left seventeen years ago, a respectable, well-living woman, the wife of a good Christian man. ”

“ And the old sailor laid his hand on the well-worn volume Bert had often seen him reading.
"The Gospels are just one grand lesson in love," he said. "What made Jesus so different from every other man? I take it was just that His heart was overflowing with love to God and love to man. That's why He was the sinless One, in my opinion. If our hearts were full of love to others, we could not do them wrong; and if we loved God perfectly, we could not break His commandments. But our love is so different from God's. ”

“ He was wise enough to know that his intemperance would probably involve his children's ruin as well as his own, yet this consideration was powerless to restrain him in the moment of weakness. Living where the enemy met him at every turn, his destruction was sure and swift. He had loved his children to the end; and Bert remembered that almost the last words he had heard from his father's lips were the prayer,—
"Deliver them from the evil." ”

“ God knew what she had done. God's eye could see the glittering thing hidden beneath the mattress. And God would punish sin. Was it too late to pray, "Deliver her from evil"?
The third day of Prin's illness was drawing to its close. Bert had drawn down the blind and lighted the solitary candle which illumined the room. The Princess had been very ill all day. The nurse had seen her in the morning, and had promised, if possible, to come in later; but she had not come. Bert was feeling intensely anxious about his sister, who had ceased to talk, and now lay in a heavy slumber. ”

“ You're too young to work for your living."
"I shall soon be eleven, sir," said Bert, stretching his diminutive frame to its utmost height, "and Prin's two years older. I sells papers of an evening, and sometimes matches, and runs errands for people; and Prin, she minds babies and helps Mrs. Kay. But the worst of it is, Prin is not strong, and she soon gets tired. I often have to work for her as well as myself."
"Upon my word you are a brave little man," said the doctor, looking at him admiringly. ”

“ It's not a bit like London here. There's a garden full of flowers, and fields, and woods with lots of primroses and violets that any one may pick. The lady keeps cows, and I have as much milk as I can drink, and every day I drive about in a beautiful carriage. Every one says how well I look, so different from what I was when I came. ”

“ Doctor and nurse worked together in breathless excitement for some minutes. Their efforts were rewarded. Hope grew as they worked, till, after about a quarter of an hour, the girl drew a deep, natural breath, and opened her eyes.
"She will live," whispered the doctor; and Bert caught the words, and ran out of the room, that he might sob freely.
The nurse sat up with the patient that night, for her weakness was extreme, and she might yet slip away if she were not assiduously cared for. But the hours of the night brought no relapse, and the morning found Prin better. ”

“ Kay."
"Oh yes, I forgot. Of course it was Mrs. Kay," said Bert. But he was no less convinced that he had seen Prin.
"People do change, though," he remarked, somewhat irrelevantly. "I never could have believed that Prin would have looked on me and turned away like that."
"Ay," said old Corney, "it was not like a sister, and that's what makes me think you must be mistaken. Well, there's one Friend will never treat you like that, Bert," and he began to sing softly his favourite hymn,—
"'I've found a Friend, oh, such a Friend!'"
"Wouldn't He be ashamed of a ragged little chap like me?" ”

“ You should just have seen her. Her frock was all white, and it sparkled so it made your eyes water to look at it. And she had diamonds in her hair and on her neck, and white satin shoes, and a fan that sparkled too. You couldn't have known her from a real princess."
"As real as the diamonds, no doubt," said the doctor drily. "Ah, so you call her Princess still."
He turned to look again at his patient. She was sleeping soundly once more. Her face was flushed now with a delicate rose, like the lining of a shell. She looked pretty and refined enough to be a princess ”

“ Kay?" repeated Mr. Corney, in momentary bewilderment, till he remembered when he had heard mention of this individual before. "Was it she they carried in there just before the procession came? I saw her face as they went by, and, do you know, she reminded me of my sister! A very different sort of person, of course—not too respectable, I am afraid—older and stouter than Priscilla would be too, but still like her. It's strange how one sees likenesses sometimes."
Bert nodded; but he was not paying great heed to what the old sailor said. There was so much to divert him in all he saw. ”

“ Just as Bert was congratulating himself on his good luck, there passed before him the stretcher on which the policemen had placed the woman who had swooned. To Bert's consternation, he recognised in the still, purple, apparently lifeless visage of the woman, the face of Mrs. Kay. He uttered a cry, and would have run after the ambulance, had not the mounted constable called to him sharply to come back. ”

“ He did not suffer acute pain; yet the boy was miserable enough as he lay on his little bed in the hospital ward. He was enduring pangs which he could not describe, and which the best of nurses could not have relieved.
Shakespeare pronounced it "sharper than a serpent's tooth" to have a thankless child, and the sting of the ingratitude that sins against love is under all circumstances hard to bear. Bert could not have put his feelings into words, but his heart ached at the remembrance of how Prin had turned from him. ”

“ CHAPTER IV The Princess's Letter
BERT found an early opportunity of pleading his own cause with the landlady. But in vain he begged her to let him remain longer in the miserable room he had called his home. He had no right to it. The poor furniture it contained was the property of the landlady, and she saw her way to letting the room to better advantage.
"What does a boy like you want with a room?" she asked. "You're always in the street. All you need is a place to sleep in. ”

“ She would manage to see everything. No one was more clever than the Princess in pushing her way to the front and securing the best possible position when there was anything to be seen or gained. Bert was profoundly conscious of his inferiority to her in this respect.
Another new interest had come into Bert's life, and shared, with the Jubilee, his thoughts. This was the landlady's new lodger. He took possession of the room in the area three days after Prin's departure. He was an old sailor, and earned his living by bill-sticking and kindred occupations of a somewhat precarious nature. ”

“ To Bert's inexperienced eye the Princess appeared very like the real article.
"Not I," she cried, with a flash of scorn for his ignorance in her eyes. "I only wish I were! You've no idea what it is to be a lady. The lovely things that Lady Millicent has! Her father just dotes on her, and he is for ever giving her presents, though she is too ill to care about them. He has given her a little jewelled watch, and a diamond star, and a musical box, and she hardly cares to look at them. She'd give them to me if I asked her for them, I verily believe."
"But you wouldn't do it, Prin?" ”

“ Fights and rows were of frequent occurrence, so that Bert was not surprised, though he was much annoyed when the sound of angry voices in hot altercation broke on his ear. If Prin were suddenly roused and affrighted, she would lose all the good that this sleep was doing her.
Bert was up the area steps in a moment, to see what he could do. Some lads, considerably bigger than himself, were causing the disturbance. The ringleader of the mischief had taken up his position, with his back against the railings of the area, and was inviting the others to "come on." ”

“ Corney might have come to the hospital to fetch Bert; but probably the old man would have found it impossible to leave his sister, whom he needed to watch constantly, if he would save her from the intemperance that threatened to prove fatal to her. ”

“ Yet now, in middle life, she was a woman degraded and enslaved by sin, living without hope, and craving only to forget the happier past, having dropped, one by one, all the good habits of her earlier life. ”

“ But I see now that I wronged you."
"I like your cat," said Bert timidly; "but Prin does not like cats. I brought a kitten home once, but she would not let me keep it."
"Who's Prin?" asked his new acquaintance.
And presently Bert was telling him all his history, and the stranger learned with surprise that the boy and his sister had occupied that room before he came.
"Well, if I'd known that you would look after my cat, I need not have troubled to come back to-night. It's a long way to go and come in one day."
"Is Liverpool farther off than Hampshire?" asked Bert. ”

“ His heart turned to Prin, with a sorrowful longing in which there was now no resentment. He was ashamed that he had felt so bitterly towards her. His thoughts grew more and more oppressive. The dark side of life presented itself to his imagination, and he could not shake off the horror of it. He remembered his father's prayer, and the meaning of it was clear now. Suddenly he sat up in bed, and, with clasped hands, breathed forth in a fervent whisper the words:—
"O God, deliver me from evil—and Prin too—for Jesus' sake!"
CHAPTER IX An Interview with the Princess
BERT'S cure was complete. ”

“ Hurst; "she may be worthy of the title yet. She has life before her, and may live to be thankful for the fall which taught her the misery of wrong-doing. Do you know, lad, there is a ladder by which men and women may climb upwards, and the rungs of that ladder are formed of the mistakes and sins of the past? It is painful climbing for most of us; but she is young, and it will be easier for her."
"Oh, I hope so," said Bert, only half-grasping the meaning of the doctor's words. ”

“ Suppose she were his sister, and he had not known her!
Bert fervently hoped that Mr. Corney would come in ere Mrs. Kay was taken back to her own ward. But the thing he so much wished did not come to pass. Contrary to his expectation, the old sailor did not appear that afternoon, and Bert feared that ere the next "visitors' day," Mrs. Kay would have left the hospital.
It was so. Two days later she came into his ward to bid him good-bye. She looked wretchedly ill and tremulous. Indeed, she declared that she felt "all of a shake," and far more fit to be in bed than to be going abroad. ”

“ He proceeded to set out the nicest supper his limited means had enabled him to provide. Prin began to eat eagerly, but ere she had swallowed many mouthfuls, her appetite suddenly failed. She pushed her plate aside, and said she could eat no more.
"Why, Prin, you must be ill," Bert said, unable to understand how one who had eaten nothing all day could be so easily satisfied.
"No, not ill, only dead tired," she said faintly. "I think I'll go to bed."
"Won't you tell me first how it is you are in London?" Bert asked timidly. "Have you left Lady Millicent?" ”