Chapter IV: Part 4

The lesson went on very pleasantly. The boys had all learned it, even including Horace, and Miss Isabel felt quite encouraged. Then came the Golden Text. Phil's voice trembled as he repeated it, and his eyes were moist.

"Miss Isabel, does it mean that we are to love real spiteful people?" asked Harry. "I don't see how we can."

"What do you mean by spiteful, Harry?"

"Well, just like this. Suppose I had a garden, and another boy should put a cow or a goat into it just to plague me, ought I to love such a boy as that?"

"I should hope there were not many boys as bad as that," said Miss Isabel.

Horace colored and dropped his eyes, and Harry got a glance from Phil that he did not quite understand. It was as if Phil were begging him with his eyes not to say any more.

"Well, I knew of that very thing being done," said John.

"You could not love such a boy as you would a good boy, it would not be right that you should," said Miss Isabel; "but you should forgive him, and try to do him a good turn if you get a chance. Turn over to Matthew 5:44, 45."

Harry turned over and read:

"'But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.'"

"You see that God is good, even to those who never think of him, or who blaspheme his name and disobey his laws. And if we ask him, he will give us his Spirit to make us like him. I think too, Harry, that when we once come to have a real sight of our own sins, we shall not think so much of other people's sins against us."

"But suppose you do try to forgive and think you have, and then something makes it all come up again?" asked Phil eagerly.

"Yes; suppose the same fellow that spoiled garden should poke some money at you and say, 'There, there's enough to pay for your beggarly garden ten times over,'" said Harry, finishing his sentence in spite of Phil's beseeching looks. "What are you to do then?"

"Then you must forgive again, and keep on forgiving every time the anger comes up," answered Miss Isabel. She saw that there was something going on which she did not understand, but she was too wise to ask any questions. "Weeding our hearts is like weeding a garden—you cannot do it all at once, but you must keep at it all summer long, every time a weed shows its head. But we must not talk any longer."

"Didn't we make Hod Maberly squirm, though?" said Harry, as they were going home. "He was just in an agony for fear we should tell Miss Isabel."

"I'm sorry, though," said Phil. "I'm afraid, he won't come any more."

"Suppose he don't, we sha'n't miss him much," said Harry, scornfully.

"No, but he will miss something," answered Phil.

"That's so," said John Drayton. "He don't get much that's good at home. His father don't believe in anything. If I had thought of that, I would have let him alone."

"If I had thought of that!" how much mischief it would have saved all the world over. Phil was right. Horace did not come to Sunday-school again.

Phil's garden grew and flourished all summer, and was the admiration of all the neighbors, though some of them wondered that he should take so much pains just for a parcel of flowers. If they had been potatoes now, or cabbages, they would have done some good. But granny said that the boy liked flowers and did the work, so he should plant what he pleased.

The hens had scratched Phil's seeds about badly, nevertheless he had a good many flowers. There were two or three kinds of portulacas, some sweet alyssum, and various others. The sweet peas turned out famously, and so did the morning-glories. Phil used to get up every morning by sunrise to see the beautiful twisted buds pop open as soon as the sun touched them. This was his time for working in his garden.

He went to school every day, and as he worked as hard at his books as he did at his flowers, he got on finely. The owlets liked him because he was so steady and industrious and made them no trouble. The boys liked him because he was so good-natured, always ready to help in whatever was going on. In short, he passed a very happy summer.

Phil did not forget what Mr. Ryan had said about cutting his flowers, and many a nosegay of sweet peas, violets, and other flowers did he carry to Matty Mehan, and to poor Jonas Smith, who was lame and never got out of his chair. His pansies were rather late in coming into blossom, but when the flowers appeared they were quite wonderful. Purple, yellow, brown, almost black with a yellow eye, almost white with purple rays, there were many varieties. The first Sunday that they were out in perfection, Phil gathered a bunch of them for Miss Isabel. He put no other flowers in his nosegay, only the seven different kinds of pansies, and surrounded the flowers with a little frame of small sprays of evergreen ferns.

"How lovely they are!" said Miss Isabel, showing them to a friend who was visiting her and had come to Sunday-school with her. "Look, Mary! Did you ever see a greater variety or finer flowers?"

"They are indeed quite wonderful," answered Miss Mary. "I love pansies above all other flowers, but I have none this year. A friend sent me a bag of very fine imported seed, but I carelessly threw it out into the street with some empty papers. When I missed it and went out to look for it, the papers were all gone. I suppose some child picked them up."

"What a pity!" said Miss Isabel.

"Yes, it was a pity, but I dare say they grew somewhere and did somebody good," answered Miss Mary.

"We must go down and see Phil's garden some day," said Miss Isabel. "He is one of my best scholars."

Phil's head was so full of thoughts that day that he hardly paid so much attention as usual, till he missed a question, a thing he had not done for a long time. Then he roused himself and gave his mind to the lesson. It was about Ananias and Sapphira.

"Now what was the sin which these unfortunate people committed?" asked Miss Isabel. "Was it in not giving up all their property?"

"Yes, ma'am," said John, giving as usual the first answer that came into his head.

"I don't think so," said Harry, "because Peter said, 'Whiles it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power?' That means, I suppose, that they had a right to give it or not as they pleased."

"Well, what was the sin then?" asked Miss Isabel, glad to see that Harry had thought about the matter.

"I don't think I quite understand," answered Harry.

"What do you think, John?"

But John did not think at all. He was not given to thinking.

"And you, Phil?"

"I think it was keeping back part, when they pretended to give it all," answered Phil slowly. "'Twas lying about it they did. They wanted to get the credit of giving it all, when they were keeping part, and maybe the very best, for themselves."

"That was it exactly," said Miss Isabel. "Just so some people do who profess to be Christians. They pretend to give up all to God and to forsake all their sins, but they don't do it. There is some little sin, or bad habit, or self-indulgence, that they don't like to part with: so they keep that while they pretend—often pretend to themselves—to give up all. Such Christians can never be happy or useful. There was once a very wise and witty man who said that all the riches and honors and pleasures in the world would be of no use to a man who was compelled always to wear a little sharp nail in the heel of his shoe. These concealed or reserved sins which we are not willing to give up are like the little sharp nail. They lame the man when he wants to walk, and torment and hinder him when he wants to work, and he can't even sit still in comfort. Now who can give me the Golden Text?"

"'If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me"
(Ps. 66:18), repeated all the voices together.

"I shall not talk about that," said Miss Isabel, "but I want you to think about it."

Phil walked slowly homeward thinking about the lesson. He had had a little—a very little—nail in his shoe all summer, and somehow it had grown a good deal longer and sharper since hearing about those pansies. He had said to himself a dozen times that he did not know what to do about it; that there was no help for it now; but he had never tried to find out whether there was any help for it or not. He went into his garden as soon as he came home and looked at his flowers. How beautiful they were! They were the glory of his garden-but then—

"You can't take them up," said the tempter. "You will kill them all."

"I can ask Mr. Regan," said Phil.

"Besides, she has no right to the plants either," said the tempter. "Wait till the seeds get ripe, and you can give her some of them."

"Maybe the seeds won't get ripe, or maybe I sha'n't live till then," answered Phil. "Anyhow, there's only one right thing to do, and I'm going to do it. There!"

"You're early for school this morning," said granny when Monday came.

Granny was almost well now. She could do many things about the house, which looked much neater than when it was left only to Mary.

"I want to stop and see Mr. Regan," answered Phil.

"Oh, very well. Just look in at the cow, and give my duty to Mrs. Barnard if you see her," said granny, who had old-fashioned notions of politeness.

Phil found Mr. Regan busy in the garden, as usual, and at once asked his question.

"Please, Mr. Regan, will it hurt pansies to transplant them now?"

"Not if you do it in the cool of the day, water them well, and shade them for a day or so," answered the old gardener. "How have yours turned out?"

"Famously," answered Phil, "only—well, you see, Mr. Regan, I feel all the time as if I hadn't any right to them, and so I'm just going to take them back to the lady that threw away the seed."

"You're a good boy and an honest boy," said Mr. Regan, "and you are going to do the right thing. However I wouldn't take them all up, for fear they shouldn't do well. Take the lady some of each kind, and then if they don't live, you can give her more. And stop in on your way home and I'll give you a lot of slips. It's such a growing time, the geraniums and things are getting out of all reason."

Phil waited till toward sunset, and then filling a basket with the very best of the pansy roots, he took them up to Mr. Anderson's, for he had heard Miss Mary say that she was going to spend two or three days with Miss Isabel. He found the two young ladies on the lawn admiring some double petunias.

"Why, Phil, what have you here?" asked Miss Isabel. "Some of your beautiful pansy roots."

"And such fine ones," said Miss Mary. "They make me regret mine more and more."

"If you please, Miss, these are yours," said Phil, blushing scarlet and stammering a little.

"Mine! How so?"

"'Twas I that picked up the seeds and planted them in my garden," said Phil, taking courage. "I didn't feel easy about them—not just right in my mind, you know—and granny said she mistrusted I ought to have carried the seeds in, and I know it, and it has been like the little nail Miss Isabel spoke of, all the time tormenting me. So I asked Mr. Regan, and he said it would do them no harm to move them, if you'll please to accept them, Miss, and excuse me for not bringing them before. And I didn't bring them all, because Mr. Regan said I'd better wait and see if these do well. And so there they are, Miss, and I'm a thousand times obliged to you."

Phil's grammar was rather "mixed up," as the boys say, but his meaning was clear.

Miss Mary was very much pleased.

As for Miss Isabel, it would be the truth to say that she was more pleased than if any one had given her a hundred dollars. She had a good many hundreds of dollars already, but she did not often see such direct results of her teaching.

"But, Phil, I cannot consent to take all the pansies," said Miss Mary when she had looked at and admired the flowers. "True, I furnished the seed, but then all the work and care has been yours. In such cases the rule is that the one who furnishes the seed shall have half the crop, so one half of these plants are honestly yours. You must take them back again."

"I didn't move them all, as I told you, Miss," said Phil. "Mr. Regan said it was better not, because they might not do well, and then you would lose them all."

"Very well then, keep what you have and I will take these. They will be a great ornament to my little garden."

"What set you to making a garden in the first place, Phil?" asked Miss Isabel, who was busy cutting some fine flowers.

"'Twas something you said one day last spring, Miss," answered Phil. "Don't you remember the text we had, 'Cast thy bread upon the waters'? You said that bread meant seed, and that any little good thing we could find to do was seed. Granny loves flowers dearly, and I thought, what should hinder my raising some for her? And then I found the papers in the street with a few seeds in most all of them besides the pansies, and Mr. Regan gave me a few more, besides the sweet peas I bought, and he told me what to do to them."

"You ought to be a gardener," said Miss Mary.

"My father was one, and it's myself would like to learn the business, if I had a chance," answered Phil. "Mr. Regan said maybe he'd find a place for me some day."

"So you know Mr. Regan," said Miss Isabel, giving Phil the flowers she had been cutting.

"Yes, ma'am; he's always been a good friend of ours."

And Phil bade the ladies good night and walked home as happy as a king. The nail was out of his shoe, and he could work at his pansy bed and enjoy its beauty without any more trouble.

"That is worth a great deal," said Miss Mary when Phil had gone.

"Yes, it is one of the greatest encouragements I have ever had," answered Miss Isabel, "and yet we might have called him the most hopeless case in the class. I heard Williams the gardener telling papa that he needed more help, and would like a boy if he could get a good one. I must tell him of Phil."

A proud and happy boy was Phil when, at the close of the summer term of school, he found himself installed as Mr. Williams's helper in the garden and green-house, and really learning the business of a gardener, besides earning a dollar and a half every week.

"It's just the place I would have chosen for you," said granny. "Mr. Anderson is a real fine man and will do well by you, and so is Mr. Williams, though he's a bit short tempered at times, as I mind your own father that's in glory this minute used to be when the work hurried him. As for Miss Isabel, she's just the darling of the world."

"I'm thinking Phil will get to be a great man one of these days," said Mary.

"I hope he'll get to be a good man, and that's better," said granny. "Greatness isn't the first thing to strive for, nor yet riches, nor yet learning even, though all are good in their way. And mind, Phil, that you don't get set up with pride, for if you do you'll have a fall. Mind you don't forget who it was gave you such an opportunity and such kind friends. Say your prayers every day, remembering that the blessed Saviour died on the cross for your salvation, and try to please him above all, for if he don't help you, it's little good any other help will do you."