boy. "I get time to play, however. I like
it."

"Which, the work or the play?"

"Both."

"Well," said Tommy after a pause, "do you ever have any trouble with the
boys you play with?"

"No," said the boy, "I don't think I do."

"Well, you must be a queer sort of a boy! Now, there's Bob
Sykes,--perhaps you've noticed that my eye is hurt, and my face
scratched some. Well, we had a little difficulty just a few moments ago;
he insulted me, and I won't take an insult from any one. And I told him
to shut up his mouth, and he sassed me back, and called me names, and
said I was stuck up and thought I was better than the other boys, and
he'd show me that I wasn't. Of course, I wouldn't stand that, so I've
had a fight,--and it isn't the first one either."

"Yes," said the boy, "I know that. I feel very sorry for Bob. He hasn't
any mother to go to, you know. He had to wash the blood and dirt off his
face as best he could at the town pump; and then wait around the streets
until his father came from work. It is pretty hard for a boy to have no
place to lay his head."

"Why, do you know Bob Sykes?" asked Tommy.

"Yes," answered the boy, "I've been with him a good deal."

"Queer now," mused Tommy. "I don't remember of ever seeing you around.
But now tell me what you would have done if he had provoked you, and
insulted you, too?"

"I would have forgiven him," answered the boy.

"Well, I did. There was one spell I just started in and forgave him
every day for a week, that was seven times."

"I would have forgiven him seventy times seven."

"That is just what my mother always says. Perhaps you know my mother?"

"She knows me, too," replied the boy.

"That is odd. I didn't think she knew any of the boys Bob knows."

"Bob does not know me," replied the boy; "I know him."

Just then Tommy's attention was attracted by a flock of little brown
birds passing over their heads. One of the birds flew low and fluttered
as if wounded, and fell in the dust near, where it lay beating its
little wings, panting and dying. The boy tenderly picked it up.

"Somebody's hit him with a sling-shot," said Tommy, carelessly.

The boy smoothed the bruised wing, and straightened the crushed and
broken body. The bird ceased fluttering.

"I'm most sorry," said Tommy, "I didn't forgive Bob. It makes me feel
bad, what you told me about his having no home. Now, mother is something
like you. She don't mind one's being poor. Why, if I took Bob hom