Harding's luck

Excerpt: ...said Dickie. "But you didn't tell me." "If I didn't 'twas because you never asked." "I-I didn't dare to," he said dreamily; "I was so afraid. You see, I've never seen them." "Afraid?" she said, laying away the folded cloth and taking out another from the deep press, oaken, with smooth-worn, brown iron hinges and lock; "never seen thy father and mother, forsooth!" "Perhaps it was the fever," said Dickie, feeling 151 rather deceitful. "You said it made me forget things. I don't remember them. Not at all, I don't." "Do not say that to them," the nurse said, looking at him very gravely. "I won't. Unless they ask me," he added. "Oh, nurse, let me do something too. What can I do to help?" "Thou canst gather such flowers as are left in the garden to make a nosegay for thy mother's room; and set them in order in fair water. And bid thy tutor teach thee a welcome song to say to them when they come in." Gathering the flowers and arranging them was pleasant and easy. Asking so intimate a favor from the sour-faced tutor whom he so much disliked was neither easy nor pleasant. But Dickie did it. And the tutor was delighted to set him to learn a particularly hard and uninteresting piece of poetry, beginning- "Happy is he Who, to sweet home retired, Shuns glory so admired And to himself lives free; While he who strives with pride to climb the skies Falls down with foul disgrace before he dies." Dickie could not help thinking that the father and mother who were to be his in this beautiful world might have preferred something simpler and more affectionate from their little boy than 152 this difficult piece whose last verse was the only one which seemed to Dickie to mean anything in particular. In this verse Dickie was made to remark that he hoped people would say of him, "He died a good old man," which he did not hope, and indeed had never so much as thought of. The poetry, he decided, would have been nicer if it had been more about his father and mother...