ck baby.

When Curdie saw how distressed she was he grew sorrier still, and said:

'I didn't mean to do any harm, ma'am. I didn't think of its being
yours.'

'Ah, Curdie! If it weren't mine, what would become of it now?' she
returned. 'You say you didn't mean any harm: did you mean any good,
Curdie?'

'No,' answered Curdie.

'Remember, then, that whoever does not mean good is always in danger of
harm. But I try to give everybody fair play; and those that are in the
wrong are in far more need of it always than those who are in the
right: they can afford to do without it. Therefore I say for you that
when you shot that arrow you did not know what a pigeon is. Now that
you do know, you are sorry. It is very dangerous to do things you
don't know about.'

'But, please, ma'am--I don't mean to be rude or to contradict you,'
said Curdie, 'but if a body was never to do anything but what he knew
to be good, he would have to live half his time doing nothing.'

'There you are much mistaken,' said the old quavering voice. 'How
little you must have thought! Why, you don't seem even to know the
good of the things you are constantly doing. Now don't mistake me. I
don't mean you are good for doing them. It is a good thing to eat your
breakfast, but you don't fancy it's very good of you to do it. The
thing is good, not you.'

Curdie laughed.

'There are a great many more good things than bad things to do. Now
tell me what bad thing you have done today besides this sore hurt to my
little white friend.'

While she talked Curdie had sunk into a sort of reverie, in which he
hardly knew whether it was the old lady or his own heart that spoke.
And when she asked him that question, he was at first much inclined to
consider himself a very good fellow on the whole. 'I really don't
think I did anything else that was very bad all day,' he said to
himself. But at the same time he could not honestly feel that he was
worth standing up for. All at once a light seemed to break in upon his
mind, and he woke up and there was the withered little atomy of the old
lady on the other side of the moonlight, and there was the spinning
wheel singing on and on in the middle of it!

'I know now, ma'am; I understand now,' he said. 'Thank you, ma'am, for
spinning it into me with your wheel. I see now that I have been doing
wrong the whole day, and such a many days besides! Indeed, I don't know
when I ever did right, and yet it seems as