The Apricot Tree | Page 4

Ned.
"What makes you ask me that question?" returned the other, sharply.
"Because," answered Ned, fixing his eyes upon him, "because the person who stole my apricots left part of a red handkerchief hanging on our hedge."
"Do you mean to say, then, that I stole them?" exclaimed his companion, in an angry tone. "I'll teach you to tell this of me."
So saying, he struck Ned a blow on the face with his fist, before Ned was aware what he was going to do.
Ned was very much tempted to strike in return; but just as he raised his arm, something seemed to whisper that he ought not to do so; and, drawing back a few steps, he called after Tom, who was beginning to run away, saying,
"You need not be afraid of me. I am not going to strike you, though you did strike me; because it is wrong to return evil for evil."
"Fine talking, indeed!" rejoined Tom, tauntingly. "I know very well the reason why you will not strike me again. You dare not, because I am the biggest and strongest. You are afraid of me."
Now Ned was no coward. He would have fought in a good cause with a boy twice his size; and he was very much provoked at the words and manner of his companion.
He had a hard struggle with himself not to return the blow; but he kept firm to the good resolution he had made, and went away.
As he was returning home very sorrowful, he could not help thinking how happy he had expected to be that evening; and he regretted extremely that his grandmother would have no cloak to keep her warm in the cold weather. Still, the recollection that he had patiently borne the blow and insulting speeches of Tom, and thus endeavoured to put in practice the good precepts he had been taught, consoled him, and made him feel less sad than he would otherwise have been.
"How did you get that black eye, Ned?" asked his grandmother, as soon as she saw him. "I hope you have not been fighting."
"No, grandmother, indeed I have not," replied Ned; and he told her how it had happened.
His grandmother said that he was a good boy to have acted as he did, and added, "It makes me happier to find that you behave well, than twenty new cloaks would."
The next day, at dinner time, when Ned went into the little outhouse where he and Tom usually ate this meal, he found Tom sitting there crying.
"What makes you cry, Tom?" inquired Ned.
"Because I have no dinner," was the reply.
"How happens that?" asked Ned.
"Because, now father's out of work, mother says she can only give us two meals a-day. I only had a little bit of bread this morning; and I shall have nothing else till I go home in the evening, and then she will give me a cold potato or two."
Ned's grandmother had given him that day for his dinner a large slice of bread, and a piece of cold bacon. Ned had been working hard, and was very hungry. He could have eaten all the bread and bacon with pleasure, and felt certain that if he had got no dinner and Tom had, Tom would not have given him any of his. He recollected that Tom had never in his life shown him any kindness; that, a fortnight ago, when Tom had had four apples given him, he had eaten them all himself, without even offering him part of one; and, above all, he called to mind that Tom was in all probability the person who had robbed him of his apricots, and killed his favourite apricot-tree.
But he remembered our Saviour's command, "Do good to them that hate you;" and though Tom was a bad boy, yet it grieved Ned to see him crying with hunger, whilst he himself had food to eat. So he divided both the bread and the bacon into two equal shares, with his knife, and then, going up to Tom, gave him one portion, and desired him to eat it. Tom looked at Ned in some surprise, and then, taking the food that was offered him, ate it in a ravenous manner, without saying a word.
"He might just have thanked me," thought Ned to himself; but he forbore to tell Tom so.
Ned always read a chapter in the Bible to his grandmother every night when he came home from work. It happened that this evening the chapter fixed on was the twelfth of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. He was much struck by one of the verses in it: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."
"Grandmother," said Ned, when he had