This eBook was produced by David Widger
Certes, the lizard is a shy and timorous creature. He runs into chinks and crannies if you come too near to him, and sheds his very tail for fear, if you catch it by the tip. He has not his being in good society: no one cages him, no one pets. He is an idle vagrant. But when he steals through the green herbage, and basks unmolested in the sun, he crowds perhaps as much enjoyment into one summer hour as a parrot, however pampered and erudite, spreads over a whole drawing-room life spent in saying "How dye do" and "Pretty Poll."
ON that dull and sombre summer morning in which the grandfather andgrandchild departed from the friendly roof of Mr. Merle, very dull andvery sombre were the thoughts of little Sophy. She walked slowly behindthe gray cripple, who had need to lean so heavily on his staff, and hereye had not even a smile for the golden buttercups that glittered on dewymeads alongside the barren road.
Thus had they proceeded apart and silent till they had passed the secondmilestone. There, Waife, rousing from his own reveries, which wereperhaps yet more dreary than those of the dejected child, haltedabruptly, passed his hand once or twice rapidly over his forehead, and,turning round to Sophy, looked into her face with great kindness as shecame slowly to his side.
"You are sad, little one?" said he.
"Very sad, Grandy."
"And displeased with me? Yes, displeased that I have taken you suddenlyaway from the pretty young gentleman, who was so kind to you, withoutencouraging the chance that you were to meet with him again."
"It was not like you, Grandy," answered Sophy; and her under-lip slightlypouted, while the big tears swelled to her eye.
"True," said the vagabond; "anything resembling common-sense is not likeme. But don't you think that I did what I felt was best for you? Must Inot have some good cause for it, whenever I have the heart deliberatelyto vex you?"
Sophy took his hand and pressed it, but she could not trust herself tospeak, for she felt that at such effort she would have burst out intohearty crying. Then Waife proceeded to utter many of those wise sayings,old as the hills, and as high above our sorrows as hills are from thevalley in which we walk. He said how foolish it was to unsettle the mindby preposterous fancies and impossible hopes. The pretty young gentlemancould never be anything to her, nor she to the pretty young gentleman.It might be very well for the pretty young gentleman to promise tocorrespond with her, but as soon as he returned to his friends he wouldhave other things to think of, and she would soon be forgotten; whileshe, on the contrary, would be thinking of him, and the Thames and thebutterflies, and find hard life still more irksome. Of all this, andmuch more, in the general way of consolers who set out on the principlethat grief is a matter of logic, did Gentleman Waife deliver himself witha vigour of ratiocination which admitted of no reply, and conveyed not aparticle of comfort. And feeling this, that great actor—not that he wasacting then-suddenly stopped, clasped the child in his arms, and murmuredin broken accents,—"But if I see you thus cast down, I shall have nostrength left to hobble on through the world; and the sooner I lie down,and the dust is shovelled over me, why, the better for you; for it seemsthat Heaven sends you friends, and I tear you from them."
And then Sophy fairly gave way to her sobs: she twined her