“Do not add another untruth, poor child, to those which you have just uttered. Do you not know that there is One above the heavens who hears the words of your lips, reads the thoughts of your hearts—One who will judge, and can punish?”
Ashamed and abashed, the three children made a hasty retreat. As soon as they were beyond sight and hearing of the strangers, Jack turned round and made a mocking face in their direction, and Madge exclaimed in an insolent tone, “We weren’t going to stop for his sermon.”
“There’s Mark there that would take it in every word, and thank him for it at the end,” said Jack.
“Oh, Mark’s so odd!” cried Ben; “he’s never like anybody else. No one would guess him for our brother!”
These words were more true than Ben’s usually were, for the bright-haired young noble himself scarcely offered a greater contrast to the ragged, dirty children, than they with their round rustic faces, marked by little expression but stupidity on that of Ben, sullen obstinacy on Madge’s, and forward impudence on Jack’s, did to the expansive brow and deep thoughtful eye of the boy whom they had spoken of as Mark.
“Yes,” said Jack, “he could never even pluck a wild-flower, but he must be pulling it to bits to look at all its parts. It was not enough to him that the stars shine to give us light, he must prick out their places on an old bit of paper, as if it mattered to him which way they were stuck. But of all his fancies he’s got the worst one now; I think he’s going quite crazed.”
“What’s he taken into his head?” said Madge.
“You remember the bag which the lady dropped at the stile, when she was going to the church by the wood?”
Madge nodded assent, and her brother continued: “What fun we had in carrying off and opening that bag, and dividing the things that were in it! Father had the best of the fun of it though, for he took the purse with the money.”
“I know,” cried Ben, “and mother had the handkerchief with lace round the edge, and E. S. marked in the corner. We—more’s the shame!—had nothing but some pence, and the keys; and Mark, as the biggest, had the book.”
“Ah! the book!” cried Jack; “that’s what has put him out of his wits!”
“No one grudged it him, I’m sure,” said Ben, “precious little any of us would have made out of it. But Mark takes so to reading, it’s so odd; and it sets him a thinking, a thinking: well, I can’t tell what folk like us have to do with reading and thinking!”