Squib and His Friends

“Why not? I thought you said he always did make you feel good.”

“So he does,” answered Squib, wrinkling up his brow in the effort to formulate the thought in his brain, but failing to find adequate words in which to express it. After some moments of silence he broke out in his squib-like way: “Yes, I just wish he would come, and then you would understand. I can’t make you, because you’ve never seen anybody like him. I think” – with a flash of sudden inspiration – “it’s because he’s a man of God. That’s what Seppi said, and I’m sure he’s right. You just feel that all the time he’s talking. And that’s what makes everything about him just what it is.”

After which very lucid statement Squib subsided into silence.

But I think the sisters understood him, in spite of the difficulty of expression, because children, and especially brothers and sisters, have a wonderful gift of reading each others’ hearts and minds by a species of intuition; and after a little pause of silence, Mary said thoughtfully, —

“I think I know what you mean, Squib dear. We oughtn’t to think just whether this person or that person would be pleased by what we do, although, of course, we must try to please our parents; but we must try most to please God; and He always sees us and knows what we are saying and doing. That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”

Squib nodded with some vehemence, but answered nothing, and the subject dropped; yet the children did not forget, and even the little twins would sometimes say to each other in whispers, —

“We shouldn’t do that if we knew Herr Adler could see us – but God always sees. We mustn’t do anything He would mind.”

Now after that journey to Switzerland, Squib no longer found himself the odd one of the family. His brothers recognized qualities and experiences in him which made them willing to patronize him and make a comrade of him in many things; whilst the sisters found him always an addition to their party, and always had a welcome for him. Moor was a great bond at first – Moor and the picture-book and the stories – and the bond once formed was never loosened, but grew stronger and stronger, even though Squib had to go to school and pass months away from them all.

But that is the way of the world, and boys and girls make light of it, provided they still have happy holidays together, which they certainly do at Rutland Chase. Squib is still looking eagerly forward to the day when he will finish his school life and claim the promised reward. He is very happy at school, to be sure, but what boy ever did fail to look beyond? and Squib’s retentive memory and Lisa’s half-yearly letters all serve to keep that purpose alive in him.

The mountaineer’s hotel in the valley is growing and flourishing. The Ernsthausens are substantial people and have paid off the last of the debt. And Squib still talks grandly to his little sisters of the day when he will go to that hotel and climb all the great mountain peaks under the escort of Seppi’s father.

THE END