Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/134

134 "Once! It's well it takes a power of spoiling to spoil good boys." Lovett hit the truth, though he did not precisely state it. Indulgence loses much of its vitiating effect where good feelings are kept in constant exercise by pure examples and warm affections. "Come, Sam! John! Bob!" cried Mr. Lovett, going to the stairs, "get up and help your mother. Bring down your bantam, Sam—he'll wake Lucy!"

Lucy at this moment was coming down stairs, and she said, smiling, she "wished he'd waked her sooner."

"Soon enough, my child, soon enough. Mother, now Lucy is up to help you, I'll tell you what I stepped in for. There was a poor German came into the bakehouse last night for employment, and Charlie made out to talk with him enough to find out he had been looking since he landed, a week ago, in vain for work. He is a very respectable-looking man, and tells a sad story about the starving state of his old parents at home, for whom he hopes to provide a place in our country—"

"Did Charlie," interrupted Mrs. Lovett, "find out all that? Well, he did not take all that pains to teach Annet for nothing."

"No, mother, a kind turn is seldom thrown away. But I was going to say, that as this poor fellow has nowhere to go to breakfast, I thought, if you were willing, I would ask him in?"

"Certainly—I should like it. You know I have rather a fancy for Germans. Lucy, clap down some sausages; he has been so long fasting he'll want something warming. Make a good cup of tea, Lucy; it will be relishing to him—poor