Our Odd-men 



two maids sewing in a room near, and they 

 fell a-screaming with laughing when they 

 heard me talking so with Martin Hilyard." 



Boys are not so sensitive as girls ; I do 

 not think they so early become aware of 

 the divine depths of love and pathos which 

 surround their every-day path of life ; they 

 are not quite so quick to see beneath the 

 comical exterior, the rugged speech, the 

 small surface sins. Therefore what in 

 Sprighdy delighted us most, as boys, were 

 his good nature, his readiness to enter into 

 our sport, his comical doggy devotion, and 

 the fun we got out of it. But I remember 

 an Incident which happened when I was 

 still a lad, which opened my eyes to some- 

 thing in him better than all these things. 



I had been very ill. They had once 

 thought I could not possibly recover ; but 

 youth and a naturally good constitution 

 were^ getting the best of it, and I was 

 wearily^ beginning to drag myself up the 

 hill of life, very languidly and with many a 

 stop by the way. One afternoon I was 

 lying In bed, in my little room, watching 

 with half-closed eyes and drowsy head a 

 fly on the window-pane, a forlorn straggler 

 from summer, whose litde form was 

 surrounded by a small blur of mist on the 

 pane. I suppose the creature was really 

 185 



