Wikkey | Page 9

the King?"
"Did He live in London?" Wikkey asked, as Lawrence took up the old
Book with the feeling that the boy should hear these things for the first
time out of his mother's Bible.
"No, He lived in a country a long way off; but that makes no difference,
because He is God, and can see us everywhere, and He wants us to be
good."
Then Lawrence opened the Bible, and after some thought, half read,
half told, about the feeding of the hungry multitude.
Each succeeding evening, a fresh story about the King was related,
eagerly listened to, and commented on by Wikkey with such familiar
realism as often startled Lawrence, and made him wonder whether he
were allowing irreverence; but which at the same time, threw a
wondrously vivid light on the histories which, known since childhood,
had lost so much of their interest for himself: and certainly, as far
awakening first the boy's curiosity, and then his love, went, the method
of instruction answered perfectly. For Wikkey did not die at the end of
the week, or of many succeeding weeks: warmth and food, and Mrs.
Evans' nursing powers combined, caused one of those curious rallies
not uncommon in cases of consumption, though no one who saw the
boy's thin, flushed cheeks, and brilliant eyes, could think the reprieve
would be a long one. Still for the present there was improvement, and
Lawrence could not help feeling glad that he might keep for a little
while longer the child whose love had strangely brightened his lonely
lodgings.
And while Wikkey's development was being carried on in the highest

direction, his education in minor matters was progressing under Mrs.
Evans' tuition--tuition of much the same kind as she had bestowed
years before on Master Lawrence and her sweet Master Robin. By
degrees Wikkey became thoroughly initiated in the mysteries of the
toilette, and other amenities of civilized life, and being a sharp child,
with a natural turn for imitation, he was, at the end of a week or two,
not entirely unlike those young gentlemen in his ways, especially when
his conversation became shorn of the expletives which had at first
adorned it, but which, under Mrs. Evans' sharp rebukes, and Lawrence's
graver admonitions that they were displeasing to the King, fast
disappeared. Wikkey's remorse on being betrayed into the utterance of
some comparatively harmless expression, quite as deep as when one
slipped that gave even Lawrence a shock, showed how little their
meaning had to do with their use.
One evening Lawrence, returning home to find Wikkey established as
usual on the sofa near the fire, was greeted by the eager question--
"Lawrence, what was the King like? I've been a thinking of it all day,
and I should like to know. Do you think He was a bit like you?"
"Not at all," Lawrence answered. "We don't know exactly what He was
like; but--let me see," he went on, considering, "I think I have a picture
somewhere--I had one;" and he crossed the room to a corner where,
between the book-case and the wall, were put away a number of old
pictures, brought from the "boys' room" at home, and never yet re-hung;
among them was a little Oxford frame containing a photograph of the
Thorn-crowned Head by Guido. How well he remembered its being
given to him on his birthday by his mother! This he showed to Wikkey,
explaining that though no one knows certainly what the King is like, it
is thought that He may have resembled that picture. The boy looked at
it for some time in silence, and then said--
"I've seen pictures like that in shops, but I never knew as it was the
King. He looks very sorrowful--a deal sorrowfuller nor you--and what
is that He has on His Head?"
"That has to do with a very sad story, which I have not told you yet.

You know, Wikkey, though he was so good and kind, the men of that
country hated Him, and would not have him for their King, and at last
they took Him prisoner, and treated Him very badly, and they put that
crown of sharp, pricking thorns on His Head, because He said He was a
King."
"Was it to make game of Him?" asked Wikkey, in a tone of mingled
awe and distress.
Lawrence nodded gravely, and feeling that this was perhaps as good a
moment as any for completing the history, he took the Book, and in
low, reverent tones, began the sad story of the betrayal, captivity, and
Death. Wikkey listened in absorbed attention, every now and then
commenting on the narrative in a way which showed its intense reality
to himself, and gave a marvellous vividness to the details of which
Lawrence