Timothys Quest | Page 6

were in no condition of mind to be over-interested, and the little fugitives were troubled with no questions as to their intentions.
And so they went out into the world together, these three: Timothy Jessup (if it was Jessup), brave little knight, nameless nobleman, tracing his descent back to God, the Father of us all, and bearing the Divine likeness more than most of us; the little Lady Gay,--somebody--nobody--anybody,--from nobody knows where,--destination equally uncertain; and Rags, of pedigree most doubtful, scutcheon quite obscured by blots, but a perfect gentleman, true-hearted and loyal to the core,--in fact, an angel in fur. These three, with the clothes-basket as personal property and the Bank of England as security, went out to seek their fortune; and, unlike Lot's wife, without daring to look behind, shook the dust of Minerva Court from off their feet forever and forever.

SCENE III.
The Railway Station.
TIMOTHY PLANS A CAMPAIGN, AND PROVIDENCE ASSISTS MATERIALLY IN CARRYING IT OUT, OR VICE VERSA.
By dint of skillful generalship, Timothy gathered his forces on a green bank just behind the railway depot, cleared away a sufficient number of tin cans and oyster-shells to make a flat space for the chariot of war, which had now become simply a cradle, and sat down, with Rags curled up at his feet, to plan the campaign.
He pushed back the ragged hat from his waving hair, and, clasping his knees with his hands, gazed thoughtfully at the towering chimneys in the foreground and the white-winged ships in the distant harbor. There was a glimpse of something like a man's purpose in the sober eyes; and as the morning sunlight fell upon his earnest face, the angel in him came to the surface, and crowded the "boy part" quite out of sight, as it has a way of doing sometimes with children.
How some father-heart would have throbbed with pride to own him, and how gladly lifted the too heavy burden from his childish shoulders!
Timothy Jessup, aged ten or eleven, or thereabouts (the records had not been kept with absolute exactness)--Timothy Jessup, somewhat ragged, all forlorn, and none too clean at the present moment, was a poet, philosopher, and lover of the beautiful. The dwellers in Minerva Court had never discovered the fact; for, although he had lived in that world, he had most emphatically never been of it. He was a boy of strange notions, and the vocabulary in which he expressed them was stranger still; further-more, he had gentle manners, which must have been indigenous, as they had certainly never been cultivated; and, although he had been in the way of handling pitch for many a day, it had been helpless to defile him, such was the essential purity of his nature.
To find a home and a mother for Lady Gay had been Timothy's secret longing ever since he had heard people say that Flossy might die. He had once enjoyed all the comforts of a Home with a capital H; but it was the cosy one with the little "h" that he so much desired for her.
Not that he had any ill treatment to remember in the excellent institution of which he was for several years an inmate. The matron was an amiable and hard-working woman, who wished to do her duty to all the children under her care; but it would be an inspired human being indeed who could give a hundred and fifty motherless or fatherless children all the education and care and training they needed, to say nothing of the love that they missed and craved. What wonder, then, that an occasional hungry little soul, starved for want of something not provided by the management; say, a morning cuddle in father's bed or a ride on father's knee,--in short, the sweet daily jumble of lap-trotting, gentle caressing, endearing words, twilight stories, motherly tucks-in-bed, good-night kisses,--all the dear, simple, every-day accompaniments of the home with the little "h."
Timothy Jessup, bred in such an atmosphere, would have gladdened every life that touched his at any point. Plenty of wistful men and women would have thanked God nightly on their knees for the gift of such a son; and here he was, sitting on a tin can, bowed down with family cares, while thousands of graceless little scalawags were slapping the faces of their French nurse-maids and bullying their parents, in that very city.--Ah me!
As for the tiny Lady Gay, she had all the winsome virtues to recommend her. No one ever feared that she would die young out of sheer goodness. You would not have loved her so much for what she was as because you couldn't help yourself. This feat once accomplished, she blossomed into a thousand graces, each one more bewitching than the last you noted.
Where, in the name of all the sacred laws of heredity,