Dick Lionheart | Page 3

no books in the Fowleys' kitchen, and none of the children went to Sunday school regularly. Just for a week or two before the annual treat, or Christmas tree, they would go in great force, but Dick could not be spared.
But he had one other little book that was kept as a hidden treasure--his mother's Bible, that she had left to him. And in that he had learned how to be a true Lionheart and a good soldier of Jesus Christ. And every day he managed to read a few verses at least.
Now, as the sultry afternoon wore away, and the baby still slept, he thought again and again of the discovery he had made, that he did not really belong to the Fowleys.
"I have tried to please them and be brave and do my duty because they've given me a home," he reasoned to himself, "but perhaps if they had money when father died, I'm not beholden after all, as they always say I am. And oh, I would like to find a real relation! And isn't it good of Paddy to get that dear little Pat for me? I must wait till he is big enough to go too, and then I can have him for my very, very own."
Dick was thirteen, and small for his age, but his mental powers were keen, and he knew that if he stayed with the Fowleys he would have no chance to get on in life.
And looking up into the blue summer sky, he prayed to his heavenly Father to help him to get away.
CHAPTER II.
FIGHTING FIRE.
A sudden scream of terror from the cottage roused Dick from his thinking, and laying the baby down he rushed in.
On the doorstep he met little Susy, with her lilac pinafore in flames. She had been trying to reach something from the mantelpiece, and had climbed up on the unsteady old fender. There was no guard in front of the open fire, and the draught had drawn her pinafore towards the bars and set it on fire, and the flames were mounting around her, and already her hair was singed.
But Lionheart knew what to do. With a spring and a cry he caught her just as she was rushing out-of-doors, and flinging her down he fell on her, and tore and clutched at the burning rags with his bare hands.
She screamed with fright rather than with pain, but Dick did not let go till the danger was past; and his clothes, being woollen, did not catch.
There was a scuffle of footsteps as Mrs. Fowley and two other women came in with a great outcry. And the sobbing child was wrapped in a big shawl, and the doctor sent for.
And her mother, to relieve her own fears, began as usual to upbraid Dick.
"It's all your fault, you good-for-nothing pauper! Why didn't you look after the child?"
"I thought you had her, she went out with you," he said, trembling with dread of more than a scolding, and scarcely able to bear the pain in his poor burned hands.
"Then you'd no business to think," she screamed. "What you've got to do is to mind the children, and anything else I've a mind to order you to do. Three years and better we've kep' you out of charity, and you don't earn shoe leather yet. Where's the baby?"
"Asleep in the garden, I put her down under the tree when I heard Susy cry out."
"Then go and fetch her this minute. And a fine hiding you'll get when Fowley comes home. Susy's his favourite out of 'em all."
Dick looked appealingly at the neighbours and muttered, "I--I can't carry her--my hands----"
"Bless me, there's work for the doctor here," said one of the women in consternation, as she looked at his poor scorched fingers.
"Depend upon 't, Mrs. Fowley, he's saved your Susy's life. Best not talk about hidings."
"What's the matter here?" cried a brisk voice at the door, as the old doctor entered. He had been visiting in the next street, and was fortunately met by the messenger.
"Burns. Ah! the old story--open fires and no guard. When will you women learn wisdom?"
Mrs. Fowley shrank from his stern look, and whined, "How can the likes of we afford guards, I should like to know?"
"Afford?" he echoed sharply, as he turned from his examination of Susy's hurts. "You women spend enough at the 'Blue Dragon' every week to put a guard at every fire-place, to say nothing of what the men spend. If you hadn't been drinking together, and neglecting home, this wouldn't have happened. I can smell the gin here and now!"
The old doctor was noted for his plain speaking, but with all his sternness to wrong doing, he was very tender-hearted, and nothing could have been more gentle than his touch on