Sometimes in this world of sin,
Little hearts are aching;
Worn by troubled thoughts within,
Almost unto breaking.
O, Thou Shepherd of the sheep!
In Thine arms enfold them;
Guard and comfort, guide and keep,
Till the heavens behold them.
IT was a happy day with Bobbie when he earned his first sixpence. He intended someday to be an engineer, and then he would bring his wages home to his mother; but up to this eventful Saturday the greatest treasure he had ever possessed was a bright sixpence that a lady had given to him for shoveling away the snow from her door. He could hardly believe that the shining piece of silver was his own. Bobbie was only eight years old, and sixpence to him seemed a mine of riches.
But when he placed the coin into his mother’s hand she kissed him tenderly. saying:
“Have you really earned sixpence, Bobbie? I think Mrs. Linton has paid you very liberally.”
“Yes, mother,” cried Bobby in great excitement, “I helped Harry Lester to sweep out her yard, and then I cleaned the lowest window, and then I polished the steps, and Mrs. Linton said you had taught me how to work, and I might come and help her in the store sometimes.”
“I am very glad to hear that, darling; I am so glad you did your best. But, Bobbie, I have just been paid for some sewing, and I do not need to take your money; you may spend your sixpence just as you please.”
“O, mother!” and for a moment Bobbie’s thoughts flew delightfully to the cakes and candies in a store around the corner, but in another moment he felt he must spend his sixpence more wisely than that, and he said, “I keep wanting to spend it every minute, mother; you keep it for me, and then when I want it I can have it.”
Mother agreed to this, and placed the sixpence to a snug corner of her workbasket, where, wrapped in pink paper, it kept company with a tiny pink pincushion.
Bobbie went to school next morning with a heart that felt equal to the hardest sums and the most difficult dictation, for had he not a secret treasure—his own shining sixpence—that would purchase ever and ever so many of the things in the stores he had to pass—candy, balls, pictures, even a jar of Mrs. Linton’s jam! Harry Lester, a bright-faced boy of eleven, nodded to him as he ran past, and said,
“Mrs. Linton says you’re, a little brick, Bobbie; she’s going to find you a lot of work. You know I go there on Saturday’s, but we move next week, so there will be lots of jobs for you.”
Bobbie held up his curly head in expectation of the employment, but the next moment his nicely brushed suit was smeared with mud, thrown by an unseen hand.
“It’s that little sneak, Whiteman,” said Lester indignantly. “I saw him picking up mud just now; he’s stooping down behind that wall.”
Bobbie doubled up his small fists, and made a dart in that direction—then he stopped. He heard Charlie Whiteman; the cripple, (whose infirmity seemed to have soured his temper and made him the most disagreeable boy in the school) call out, tauntingly,
“Coward! coward! Who was it that wouldn’t thrash Hicks last week?”
Bobbie’s fingers, soft and rosy as they were, smarted to slap his teasing face, but he looked steadily away from Whiteman, and his little beating heart spoke to an unseen Friend,
“Do help me, Lord Jesus Christ; help me not to hurt him.”
Harry Lester watched the two; he knew, and so did Charlie, that Bobbie was no coward. Charlie limped away towards the school, laughing scornfully, and declaring that Bobbie was afraid to touch him. Harry said to himself, (feeling a little ashamed of his own readiness for a hasty blow and an angry word when he was “put out,”) “I suppose the little chap is thinking of the superintendent’s address last Sunday about the Prince of Peace, and how He wants His little flock to be patient and gentle and forgiving. Anyway, I do think that Whiteman deserves to be paid back in some way.”
Bobbie was of the same opinion: he was only a little child, but he knew that his Master would have him “pay back” his enemies by doing good to them. And his tiny feet had already begun to follow Jesus, for the dear father whom God had taken, and whom Bobbie had never forgotten, had laid his hand upon the curly head in his dying hour and prayed that his little son might meet him in heaven, and be kept faithful unto the end.
ML 12/08/1918