to teach me. Look you here, Davie: I
have so many lessons given me, that I have no time or need to add to
them any of my own. If you were to ask the cook to let you have a cold
dinner, you would perhaps eat it with pride, and take credit for what
your hunger yet made quite agreeable to you. But the boy who does not
grumble when he is told not to go out because it is raining and he has
a cold, will not perhaps grumble either should he happen to find his
dinner not at all nice."

Davie hung his head. It had been a very small grumble, but there are no
sins for which there is less reason or less excuse than small ones: in
no sense are they worth committing. And we grown people commit many
more such than little children, and have our reward in childishness
instead of childlikeness.

"It is so easy," continued Donal, "to do the thing we ordain ourselves,
for in holding to it we make ourselves out fine fellows!--and that is
such a mean kind of thing! Then when another who has the right, lays a
thing upon us, we grumble--though it be the truest and kindest thing,
and the most reasonable and needful for us--even for our dignity--for
our being worth anything! Depend upon it, Davie, to do what we are told
is a far grander thing than to lay the severest rules upon
ourselves--ay, and to stick to them, too!"

"But might there not be something good for us to do that we were not
told of?"

"Whoever does the thing he is told to do--the thing, that is, that has
a plain ought in it, will become satisfied that there is one who will
not forget to tell him what must be done as soon as he is fit to do it."

The conversation lasted only while Donal ate his breakfast, with the
little fellow standing beside him; it was soon over, but not soon to be
forgotten. For the readiness of the boy to do what his master told him,
was beautiful--and a great help and comfort, sometimes a rousing rebuke
to his master, whose thoughts would yet occasionally tumble into one of
the pitfalls of sorrow.

"What!" he would say to himself, "am I so believed in by this child,
that he goes at once to do my words, and shall I for a moment doubt the
heart of the Father, or his power or will to set right whatever may
have seemed to go wrong with his child!--Go on, Davie! You are a good
boy; I will be a better man!"

But naturally, as soon as lessons were over, he fell again to thinking
what could have befallen him the night before. At what point did the
aberratio