The Hillsdale Standard

"I wish father would come home."

The voice that said that had a troubled tone, and the face that looked up was very sad.

"Your father will be angry," said an aunt, who was sitting in the room with a book in her hand. The boy raised himself from the sofa, where he had been lying in tears for half an hour, and, with a touch of indignation in his voice, answered:

"He'll be sorry, not angry. Father never gets angry."

For a few moments the aunt looked at the boy half-curiously, and let her eyes fall again upon the book that was in her hand. The boy laid himself down upon the sofa again, and hid his face from sight.

"That's father now!" He started up, after the lapse of nearly ten minutes, as the sound of a bell reached his ears, and went to the room door. He stood there for a little while, and then came slowly back, saying, with a disappointed air,

"It isn't father. I wonder what keeps him so late. O, I wish he would come now!"

"You seem anxious to get deeper into trouble," remarked the aunt, who had been only in the house a week, and who was neither very amiable nor very sympathizing toward children. The boy's fault had provoked her, and she considered him a fit subject for punishment.

"I believe, Aunt Phebe, you'd like to see me whipped," said the boy, a little warmly. "But you won't."

"I must confess," replied Aunt Phebe, "that I think a little wholesome discipline of the kind you speak of would not be out of place. If you were my child, I am very sure you would escape."

"I'm not your child; I don't want to be. Father's good, and loves me."

"If your father is so good, and loves you so well, you must be very ungrateful, or a very inconsiderate boy. His goodness doesn't seem to have helped you much."

"Hush, will you," ejaculated the boy, excited to anger by this unkindness of speech in his aunt.

"Phebe!" It was the boy's mother who spoke now, for the first time. In an undertone she added - "You are wrong. Richard is suffering quite enough, and you are doing him harm rather than good."

Again the bell rang, and again the boy left his seat on the sofa, and went to the sitting-room door.

"It's father!" and he went gliding down stairs.

"Ah, Richard!" was the kindly greeting, as Mr. Gordon took the hand of his boy. "But what's the matter, my son? You don't look happy."

"Won't you come in here?" and Richard drew his father in the library. Mr. Gordon sat down, still holding Richard's hand.

"You are troubled, my son: what has happened?"

The eyes of Richard filled with tears as he looked into his father's face. He tried to answer, but his lips quivered. Then he turned away, and opened the door of the cabinet, brought out the fragments of a broken statuette, which had been sent home only the day before, and set them on a table before his father, over whose countenance came instantly a shadow of regret.

"Who did this, my boy?" was asked in an even voice.

"I did it."

"How?"

"I threw my ball in there - only once, in forgetfulness."

A little while Mr. Gordon sat contemplating himself, and collecting his disturbed thoughts. Then he said cheerfully

"What is done, Richard, can't be helped. Put the broken pieces away. You have had trouble enough about it, I can see, and reproof enough for your thoughtlessness, so I shall not add a word to increase your pain."

"O, father!" and the boy threw his arms about his father's neck.

Five minutes later, and Richard entered the sitting-room with his father. Aunt Phebe looked up for two shadowed faces, but did not see them. She was puzzled.

"That was very unfortunate," she said, a little while after Mr. Gordon came in. "It was such an exquisite work of art."

Richard was leaning against his father when his aunt said this. Mr. Gordon only smiled, and drew his arms closely around his boy.

Mrs. Gordon threw upon her sister a look of warning; but it was unheeded.

"I think Richard was a very naughty boy."

"We have settled all that, Phebe," was the mild but firm answer of Mr. Gordon; "and it is one of our rules to get into the sunshine as quick as possible." - [Christian at Work.