False Friends, and The Sailors Resolve | Page 7

fast as you can," said Alie.
"Catch me rubbing it out!" cried Johnny; "it's the best sketch that ever I drew, and as like the old savage as it can stare!"
Late in the evening their mother returned from Brampton, where she had been nursing a sick lady. Right glad were Johnny and Alie to see her sooner than they had ventured to expect. She brought them a few oranges, to show her remembrance of them. Nor was the old sailor forgotten; carefully she drew from her bag and presented to him a new pipe.
The children glanced at each other. Jonas took the pipe with a curious expression on his face, which his sister was at a loss to understand.
"Thank'ee kindly," he said; "I see it'll be a case of--
"'If ye try and don't succeed, Try, try, try again.'"
What he meant was a riddle to every one else present, although not to the reader.
The "try" was very successful on that evening and the following day. Never had Johnny and Alie found their uncle so agreeable. His manner almost approached to gentleness,--it was a calm after a storm.
"Uncle is so very good and kind," said Alie to her brother, as they walked home from afternoon service, "that I wonder how you can bear to have that naughty picture still in your book. He is not in the least like a cannibal, and it seems quite wrong to laugh at him so."
"I'll rub it all out one of these days," replied Johnny; "but I must show it first to Peter Crane. He says that I never hit on a likeness: if he sees that, he'll never say so again!"
The next morning Jonas occupied himself with gathering wild flowers and herbs in the fields. He carried them into his little room, where Johnny heard him whistling "Old Tom Bowling," like one at peace with himself and all the world.
Presently Jonas called to the boy to bring him a knife from the kitchen; a request made in an unusually courteous tone of voice, and with which, of course, Johnny immediately complied.
He found Jonas busy drying his plants, by laying them neatly between the pages of a book, preparatory to pressing them down. What was the terror of Johnny when he perceived that the book whose pages Jonas was turning over for this purpose was no other than his "Robinson Crusoe"!
"Oh! if I could only get it out of his hands before he comes to that horrid picture! Oh! what shall I do? what shall I do?" thought the bewildered Johnny. "Uncle, I was reading that book," at last he mustered courage to say aloud.
"You may read it again to-morrow," was the quiet reply of Jonas.
"Perhaps he will not look at that picture," reflected Johnny. "I wish that I could see exactly which part of the book he is at! He looks too quiet a great deal for any mischief to have been done yet! Dear! dear! I would give anything to have that 'Robinson Crusoe' at the bottom of the sea! I do think that my uncle's face is growing very red!--yes! the veins on his forehead are swelling! Depend on't he's turned over to those unlucky cannibals, and will be ready to eat me like one of them! I'd better make off before the thunder-clap comes!"
"Going to sheer off again, Master Johnny?" said the old sailor, in a very peculiar tone of voice, looking up from the open book on which his finger now rested.
"I've a little business," stammered out Johnny.
"Yes, a little business with me, which you'd better square before you hoist sail. Why, when you made such a good figure of this savage, did you not clap jacket and boots on this little cannibal beside him, and make a pair of 'em 'at home'? I suspect you and I are both in the same boat as far as regards our tempers, my lad!"
Johnny felt it utterly impossible to utter a word in reply.
"I'm afraid," pursued the seaman, closing the book, "that we've both had a bit too much of the savage about us,--too much of the dancing round the fire. But mark me, Jack,--we learn even in that book that a savage, a cannibal may be tamed; and we learn from something far better, that principle,--the noblest principle which can govern either the young or the old,--_may_, ay, and _must_, put out the fire of fierce anger in our hearts, and change us from wild beasts to men! So I've said my say," added Jonas with a smile; "and in token of my first victory over my old foe, come here, my boy, and give us your hand!"
"O uncle, I am so sorry!" exclaimed Johnny, with moistened eyes, as he felt the kindly grasp of the old man.
"Sorry are you? and what were