أنت هنا
قراءة كتاب The Factory Boy
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
have a dollar. Oh, I'm so glad!"
The woman looked in his pale face, and couldn't help saying, as she did so,—
"Are you hungry, child?"
"Not very."
"What did you have for breakfast?"
His lips quivered, but he knew by her kind face that she was a friend; and he told her the whole story of his mother's long sickness; and how they had grown poorer and poorer, until there was nothing now but what he earned.
"I knew Ella would be hungrier than I," he said, looking the woman full in the face with his clear blue eyes; "and so I didn't take the porridge."
"Wait a minute; you sha'n't go to work so," was all she said; and then she was off through the door, down the long steps in a hurry.
He pulled his stool close to the small wheel, on which was a large skein of fine yarn, and began to turn it with his foot, when the woman came back, bringing a small basket.
"Here, Johnny, eat this and this," giving him a buttered biscuit and a piece of cold meat; "and carry the rest home. There is enough for you, your mother, and Ella, to have a good dinner."
Poor Johnny was dumb with astonishment. He could scarcely realize that all this was for him; but as the woman waited to see him eat, he pulled the hard silver dollar from his pocket and held it out to her.
"No! no!" she exclaimed; "give it to your mother. She'll know what to do with it, I dare say."
That was a happy day for Johnny; almost the happiest he had ever known. He had begun it by giving up his own comfort for that of his mother and sister, and by-and-by God sent him friends to care for him.
CHAPTER II.
ONALD MILES was the name of the Superintendent of the stocking factory. He had just married a young wife, and brought her to live in one of the new houses near the mill. She was a Christian woman, who tried to follow her Master, and do good wherever she had opportunity. She took a class in the Sabbath school, and told her husband she meant to have some scholars from the factory. Two or three times she had noticed Johnny running up the steps, and thought, "that boy is too small for such work." You can imagine, then, how she felt when she heard his simple story.
In the evening Johnny and his mother were eagerly talking over the various events and scenes of the day when Mrs. Miles opened the door and presented herself before them.
"I feel sure," she had said to her husband, "that the child told me the truth. His eyes were too honest to deceive; but still I mean to go this very day and see for myself. Why, they have nothing to eat and are on the very verge of starvation!"
"I wish, Johnny," Mrs. Talbot was saying, "that the dollar was ours; and then you should have a pair of shoes; but it is not, and we must contrive some way to find the owner."
The room was very poor, but clean as hands could make it. On the floor in the corner was a straw bed, between the windows, a long chest, and near the fire three small wooden stools standing before an old rickety table.
Mrs. Miles soon convinced the poor woman that she was a friend; and, before