He did not condescend,
however, to meet my eyes. His own were still fixed steadily on
Charlie's, and he went on.
"_I've heard it._ My ears are quick, and for many a Sunday after I came
I caught the whispers behind me as I went up the aisle, 'Poor man!'
'Poor gentleman!' 'He looks bad, too!' One morning an old woman, in a
big black bonnet, said, 'Poor soul!' so close to me, that I looked
down, and met her withered eyes, full of tears--for me!--and I said,
'Thank you, mother,' and she fingered the sleeve of my coat with her
trembling hand (the veins were standing out on it like ropes), and said,
'I've knowed trouble myself, my dear. The Lord bless yours to you!'"
"It must have been Betty Johnson," I interpolated; but the school-master
did not even look at me.
"You and I," he said, bending nearer to Cripple Charlie, "have had our
share of this life's pain so dealt out to us that any one can see and
pity us. My boy, take a fellow-sufferer's word for it, it is wise and
good not to shrink from the seeing and pitying. The weight of the cross
spreads itself and becomes lighter if one learns to suffer with others
as well as with oneself, to take pity and to give it.
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