The boys of the Hill-top school had taken all living things under their protection, and you may be sure that they put down all kinds of thoughtless cruelty.

It was just a year from the day on which they made their bargain with Mr. Patterson that the fountain was set up.  It was shrouded in a great flag until it should be finally unveiled.

It was a great day in the village, I can tell you.  Never before had the Hill-top schoolboys been so looked up to.  The fountain was their gift to the village.  They had earned it faithfully and well.  They were all there, drawn up in a circle about the fountain,—­ Ralph and Dick and Tommy and Master Sunshine, and all the other pupils of the school.  Close by were gathered their relatives and friends; for the formal unveiling was felt to be a most important matter, and the whole village had turned out to witness the ceremony.

Mrs. Norton was looking very pleased and happy over some words that Mr. Patterson said quietly in her ear, while Lucy, now a baby no longer, cried out from her post on her father’s shoulder, “It’s dee Suns’ine’s fountain, it’s dee Suns’ine’s fountain;” and Almira Jane dressed in her best bib and tucker, and Jacob dressed in his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, looked across at each other very kindly.

Presently Mr. Patterson in a few words told of the events that had led to the erection of the fountain, and Mr. Sinclair called on Master Frederick Norton to pull down the great flag that veiled the fountain from view.  A cry of admiration went up from the crowd as the fountain, a most beautiful work of art, burst on their view.

At a second signal from Mr. Sinclair, plenteous streams of sparkling water gushed into the troughs and basins, while the boys of the Hill-top school burst into a song which their teacher had especially prepared for the occasion.

Gyp and Tim meantime, who had followed their young masters from home, suddenly realized what all the disturbance was about, and with one accord they made their way through the crowd, and began to lap up water from the dog-basins with as little concern as if they had been used to these luxuries all their lives.

Master Sunshine’s eyes were with his pet, you may be sure; and suddenly he stopped singing right in the middle of a verse, and gazed in wonder at the words which were carved low down at the base of the fountain, “I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.”

“How could Mr. Patterson know the very text I liked best of all?” he said to himself.  And he pondered over it all that day.  In the evening, after he had tended to his Cochin Chinas and captured the Guinea hens in the very act of stealing away, and had seen that the Wanderer and his Wife were under shelter, a light suddenly broke on him.

“O Almira Jane, I believe it was you who told!” he exclaimed as he burst into the kitchen; and although she never would admit it, I think she did.  The Project Gutenberg Etext of Master Sunshine by Mrs. C. F. Fraser ******This file should be named msuns10.txt or msuns10.zip******