Bessies Fortune | Page 8

I am tired, too."
"Is you sick?" was Grey's next question, to which his grandfather
replied:
"No, I am not sick," while he clasped both his hands tightly over his
head out of reach of the baby fingers, which sometimes tried to touch
them.
"Is you sorry, then?" Grey continued, and the grandfather replied:
"Yes, child, very, very sorry."
There was the sound of a sob in the old man's voice, and Grey's blue
eyes opened wider as they looked wistfully at the lips trembling with
emotion.
"Has you been a naughty boy?" he said; and, with a sound like a moan,
Grandpa Jerrold replied:
"Yes, yes, very, very naughty. God grant you may never know how
naughty."
"Then why don't Auntie Hannah sut oo up in 'e bed'oom?" Grey asked,
with the utmost gravity, for, in his mind, naughtiness and being shut up
in his aunt's bedroom, the only punishment ever inflicted upon him,
were closely connected with each other.
Almost any one would have smiled at this remark, but Grandpa Jerrold
did not. On the contrary there came into his eyes a look of horror as he
exclaimed:
"Shut me in the bedroom! That would be dreadful indeed."

Then, springing up, he hurried away into the field and disappeared
behind a ledge of rocks, where, unseen by any eye save that of God, he
wept more bitterly than he had ever done before.
"Why, oh, why," he cried, "must this innocent baby's questions torture
me so? and why can I never take him in my arms or lay my hands upon
him lest they should leave a stain?"
Then holding up before him his hard, toil-worn hands, he tried to recall
what it was he had heard or read of another than himself who tried to
rid his hands of the foul spot and could not.
"Only the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," he whispered to
himself, while his lips moved spasmodically with the prayer habitual to
them; four words only, "Forgive me, Lord, forgive."
It had always been a strong desire with Grey to be led around the
premises by his grandfather, who had steadily resisted all advances of
that kind, until with a child's quick intuition, Grey seemed to
understand that his grandfather's hands were something he must not
touch.
That afternoon, however, as Mr. Jerrold was walking on the green
sward by the kitchen door, with his head bent down and his hands
clasped behind him, Grey stole noiselessly up to him, and grasping the
right hand in both his own, held it fast, while he jumped up and down
as he called out to Hannah, who was standing near:
"I'se dot it, I'se dot it--dada's han', an' I sal keep it, too, and tiss it hard,
like dat," and the baby's lips were pressed upon the rough hand, which
lay helpless and subdued in the two small palms holding it so tight.
It was like the casting out of an evil spirit, and Granpa Jerrold felt half
his burden rolling away beneath that caress. There was a healing power
in the touch of Grey's lips, and the stain, if stain there were upon the
wrinkled hand, was kissed away, and the pain and remorse were not so
great after that.

Grey had conquered and was free to do what he pleased with the old
man, who became his very slave, going wherever Grey liked, whether
up the steep hill-side in the rear of the house or down upon the pond
near by, where the white lilies grew and where there was a little boat in
which the old man and the child spent hours together, during the long
summer afternoons.
In the large woodshed opposite the well, and very near the window of
Granpa Jerrold's bedroom, a rude bench had been placed for the use of
pails and washbasins, but Grey had early appropriated this to himself
and persisted in keeping his playthings there, in spite of all his
grandfather's remonstrances to the contrary. If his toys were removed
twenty times a day to some other locality, twenty times a day he
brought them back, and arranging them upon the bench sat down by
them defiantly, kicking vigorously against the side of the house in
token of his victory, and wholly unconscious that every thud of his
little heels sent a stab to his grandfather's heart.
What if he should kick through the clapboards? What if the floor
should cave in? Such were the questions which tortured the half crazed
man, as he wiped the perspiration from his face and wondered at the
perversity of the boy in selecting that spot of all others, where he must
play and sit and kick as only a healthy, active child can do.
But after the