His words cut my heart like a knife; but I was too utterly wretched already to be much more miserable; I only lay still and moaned.  At last he took pity, and lifting me up on to his knee, endeavoured to comfort me.

This was not, however, an easy matter.  I knew much better than he did how very naughty I had been; and I felt that I had murdered the poor tender little birds.

“I can never, never, forgive myself!” I sobbed.

“But you must be reasonable,” he said.  “You gave way to your vanity and wilfulness, and persuaded yourself that you only wished to be kind to the blackbirds; and you have been punished.  Is it not so?”

“O yes!” I cried; “I am so wicked!  I wish I were as good as you are!”

“As I am!”—­he began.

I was too young then to understand the sharp tone of self-reproach in which he spoke.  In my eyes he was perfection; only perhaps a little too good.  But he went on:—­

“Do you know, this fault of yours reminds me of a time when I was just as wilful and conceited, just as much bent upon doing the great duty of helping others in my own grand fashion, rather than in the humble way which GOD’s Providence pointed out, only it was in a much more serious matter; I was older, too, and so had less excuse.  I am almost tempted to tell you about it; not that our cases are really quite alike, but that the punishment which met my sin was so unspeakably bitter in comparison with yours, that you may be thankful to have learnt a lesson of humility at smaller cost.”

I did not understand him—­in fact, I did not understand many things that he said, for he had a habit of talking to me as if he were speaking to himself; but I had a general idea of his meaning, and said (very truly), “I cannot fancy you doing wrong.”

I was puzzled again by the curious expression of his face; but he only said, “Shall I tell you a story?”

I knew his stories of old, and gave an eager “Yes.”

“It is a sad one,” he said.

“I do not think I should like a very funny one just now,” I replied.  “Is it true?”

“Quite,” he answered.  “It is about myself.”  He was silent for a few moments, as if making up his mind to speak; and then, laying his head, as he sometimes did, on my shoulder, so that I could not see his face, he began.

“When I was a boy (older than you, so I ought to have been better), I might have been described in the words of Scripture—­I was ’the only son of my mother, and she was a widow.’  We were badly off, and she was very delicate, nay, ill—­more ill, GOD knows, than I had any idea of.  I had long been used to the sight of the doctor once or twice a week, and to her being sometimes better and sometimes worse; and when our old servant lectured me for making a noise, or the doctor begged that she might not be excited or worried, I fancied that doctors and nurses always did say things of that sort, and that there was no particular need to attend to them.