“‘I’ll tell you what, James,’ your father said. ‘I will get you a book to teach you all about it, and all the things you will want. You must get some flowers to copy—easy ones to begin with, and if you are sharp, you will find in a very short time you will be able to earn money, besides keeping yourself employed. I will lay out a pound, James, in the materials, and you shall pay it out of your first earnings.’ That’s three years back now, Miss Carry, and I was not much more than fourteen. But I had thought a good deal, through sitting here all day with nothing to do, but to think, think all the long hours, and I had read a great deal too, for Mr. Walker has always lent me what books I liked. But, boy as I was, my heart was too full of delight and hope to say one word. To think that I was not to be all my life without an occupation or an aim, that I was not always to be a burden to others! It was almost too much; for now for the first time your father’s words seem to point out that it might be so different to what I had thought. I have read in books, Miss Carry, of what a man condemned to death feels when he is reprieved upon the scaffold, but I am sure he could not feel more than I did. I had so often wished to die, and had thought it would be so much better for me, so much happier than my life could be, that it seemed as if more than fresh life was given me. Oh, how anxious I was till your father brought the things, how I learnt the book by heart before I ventured to begin, how nervous I was with my first attempt, and, above all, what joy I felt when mother took out a box of my flowers, and brought me back far more than I had ever dreamt they would have fetched, and the news that at the shop where she had sold them, they had said they would take as many more as I could make. I soon paid your father back his pound, Miss Carry; but as long as I live I can never repay him for the benefit he did me. What a different life mine has been since—always busy and happy, with a feeling that I am no longer a burden but a help to father and mother; and all this I owe to your father.” “Dear father,” Carry said softly, “he is always good and kind. That puts me in mind that he is all alone in the shop, and that I must be going home, to see after the dinner. Good bye, James, and thank you for your flowers.” “Good bye, Miss Carry, you are heartily welcome to them.” And so shaking hands cordially with the crippled lad, and kissing the children, Carry went back to relieve her father in the shop; while James’s studies at his algebra made but small progress that morning. For a bright face, which certainly Colenso never thought of inserting there, would keep intruding itself between the figures and his eyes, and making a terrible confusion of + and – and of “a’s” and “x’s.” CHAPTER VII. A STARTLING SUGGESTION.