Master Sunshine | Page 2

only too pleased to have him look over the beans for the
bean-pot, and fill the wood-box, and do all the other little kitchen
chores that he delighted in.
There were sure to be pleasant times after one of Almira Jane's nervous
attacks. When she was quite over her flurry and worry, Daisy, the
Maltese cat, would crawl out of her hiding-place under the stove, and
arch her tail, and purr contentedly as she rubbed her long, graceful
body against the table-legs; while Gyp, the pet dog, would hurry in
from the dog-house under the shade of the orchard-trees, and jump on
Almira Jane's shoulder, and she would be as pleased as possible over
his knowing ways. At such times Master Sunshine was very fond of
Almira Jane.
He loved Lucy with a steady affection, too, though she pulled his curls
sometimes until he fairly expected to lose the whole of his golden locks.
She needed a great deal of patient amusement, too, and she was not
very considerate of his belongings.
One day he was very angry, and his hand was lifted in anger against
her.
The trouble was that she had torn in two his favorite picture of
elephants in his animal book. The little girl was quite unaware of the
mischief her chubby fingers had wrought, but she knew very well by
the look of Master Sunshine's overcast face that in some way she had
displeased him.
So, pursing up her lips in a smile not unlike his own sunshiny one, she
lisped, in funny imitation of her mother,--

"Never mind, Suns'ine, little sister's sorry;" and, strange to say, at her
words the angry passion left him, and tears of shame stood in his blue
eyes.
"Of course," he said afterwards, in telling the story to his mother, "I
know that Lucy didn't know the sense of what she was saying, but she
did seem to know how to get at the "sensibliness" of me. Just imagine,
mother, how bad we would all have felt if I had struck my own dear
sister that God sent us to take care of!"
And that was so like Master Sunshine. He never willingly gave pain to
any living creature; and although he was sometimes careless and
forgetful, just like other boys, yet he was never known to be wilfully
unkind.
He loved his mother very dearly too, and perhaps it was from her gentle
ways that he had learned to be so thoughtful for others. He told her all
his joys, and all his secrets save one; and he dearly loved the bedtime
hour, when she read to him the stories that he most admired,--stories of
brave deeds were the kind he was always asking for. But neither of
them ever dreamed that the quiet bedtime hours were teaching him to
be a hero.
It did not seem possible that an eight-year-old boy could be a hero such
as one reads of in books.
Of course, he was going to do great things when he was a man. He
meant to make a great fortune, of which half was to be his mother's;
and if she chose to spend it on churches and missionaries and schools,
so much the better.
He was sure she would rather do this than buy herself handsome
dresses and diamond rings and ruby necklaces; and he was quite certain
that, when she wore her gray gown and her gray bonnet, with the purple
violets tucked under the brim, that she was the most beautiful lady in
the world.
His own share of the fortune he planned to spend in many ways. He

promised himself, among other things, that he would put up a fountain
in the village, where tired people and thirsty horses and cows and dogs
and birds would come for a drink. "I'd have a text on it too," he would
say, with his eyes shining with excitement. "It should be, 'I was thirsty,
and ye gave me drink.' And of course 'I' would mean the Lord; for the
Bible tells us how kind he was to all helpless things, and I think he
would be pleased to have all the animals tended to as well as the thirsty
people. I wish I could be a man now, and they would not have to go
thirsty any longer."
He often told Almira Jane about the fountain too; and she always said
that it was a capital idea.
But it was to his father only that he told his secret.
It was a queer secret, and a very real trouble, too, I can tell you.
Part of it was that Master Sunshine was just the least bit bow- legged.
Of course there could not be much of a secret about that. Lots of people
knew