“Suppose you were poor and friendless—­an orphan with no one to care for you?  Suppose you had no dear, good little sister like Hattie to love you?  Now, Felix, I know that the very fact that you are not as strong and well-grown as most boys of your age, only makes your mother and all of us love you more tenderly; and it is very ungrateful in you to talk so bitterly when we are trying to make you happy and good and useful.  Look at little Lila, shut up in silence, unable to speak one word, or to hear a bird sing or a baby laugh, and yet see how merry and good-natured she is.  How much more afflicted she is than you are!  Suppose she was always fretting and complaining, looking miserable and sour, and out of humor, do you think you would love her half as well as you do now?”

He made no reply, but his thin hands covered his sallow face.

Hattie came close to him, sat down on the carpet, and put her head, thickly crowned with yellow curls, on his knee.  Her uncle Grey had given her a pretty ring the day before, and now she silently and softly took it from her own finger, and slipped it on her brother’s.

“Felix, you and Hattie were so delighted with that little poem which I read to you from the Journal of Eugenie de Guerin, that I have tried to set it to music for you.  The tune does not suit it exactly, but we can use it until I find a better one.”

She went to the piano and sang that pretty nursery ballad, “JOUJOU, the angel of the playthings.”

Hattie clapped her hands with delight, and Felix partly forgot his woes and grievances.

“Now, I want you both to learn to sing it, and I will teach Hattie the accompaniment.  On Felix’s birthday, which is not very distant, you can surprise your father and mother by singing it for them.  In gratitude to the author I think every little child should sing it and call it ‘Eugenie’s Angel Song.’  Hattie, it is eleven o’clock, and time for you to practice your music-lesson.”

The little girl climbed upon the piano-stool and began to count aloud, and after a while Edna bent down and put her hand on Felix’s shoulder.

“You grieved your mother this morning and spoke very disrespectfully to her.  I know you regret it, and you ought to tell her so and ask her to forgive you.  You would feel happier all day if you would only acknowledge your fault.  I hear your mother in her own room; will you not go and kiss her?”

He averted his head and muttered: 

“I don’t want to kiss her.”

“But you ought to be a dutiful son, and you are not; and your mother has cause to be displeased with you.  If you should ever be so unfortunate as to lose her, and stand as I do, motherless, in the world, you will regret the pain you gave her this morning.  Oh! if I had the privilege of kissing my mother, I could bear almost any sorrow patiently.  If it mortifies you to acknowledge your bad behavior, it is the more necessary that you should humble your pride.  Felix, sometimes I think it requires more nobility of soul to ask pardon for our faults than to resist the temptation to commit them.”