Sunday to find myself still standing in the
middle of the Litany. My mother was behaving too well herself to find me
out, and though Jem was giggling he dared not move, because he was
kneeling next my father, whose back was turned to me. I knelt down, and
started to hear the parson say--"show Thy pity upon all prisoners and
captives!" And then I knew what it is to wish when it is too late. For I
did so wish I had really prayed for prisoners and captives every Sunday,
because then I should have prayed for that poor man nearly all the long
time he had been so miserable; for we began to go to church very early,
and one learns to pray easier and sooner than one learns anything else.

All this had happened in the holidays, but when they were over school
opened as before, and with additional scholars; for sympathy was wide
and warm with the school-mistress. Strangely enough, both partners in
the firm which had prosecuted Mr. Wood were dead. Their successors
offered him employment, but he could not face the old associations. I
believe he found it so hard to face any one, that this was the reason of
his staying at home for a time and helping in the school. I don't think
we boys made him uncomfortable as grown-up strangers seemed to do, and
he was particularly fond of Cripple Charlie.

This brought me into contact with him, for Charlie and I were great
friends. He was as well pleased to be read to out of the Penny Numbers
as the bee-master, and he was interested in things of which Isaac
Irvine was completely ignorant.

Our school was a day-school, but Charlie had been received by Mrs. Wood
as a boarder. His poor back could not have borne to be jolted to and
from the moors every day. So he lived at Walnut-tree Farm, and now and
then his father would come down in a light cart, lent by one of the
parishioners, and take Charlie home from Saturday to Monday, and then
bring him back again.

The sisters came to see him too, by turns, sometimes walking and
sometimes riding a rough-coated pony, who was well content to be tied to
a gate, and eat some of the grass that overgrew the lane. And often
Charlie came to _us_, especially in haytime, for haycocks seem very
comfortable (for people whose backs hurt) to lean against; and we could
cover his legs with hay too, as he liked them to be hidden. There is no
need to say how tender my mother was to him, and my father used to look
at him half puzzledly and half pitifully, and always spoke to