Read Ebook: The Apricot Tree by Unknown

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 157 lines and 9961 words, and 4 pages

"I would be revenged on them, some how or other," he was going to have added; but the texts which he had learned a few days before concerning the forgiveness of injuries, and which he had frequently repeated to himself since, came into his mind, and he stopped short.

On looking round the garden, to see if they could discover any traces of the thief, Ned and his grandmother saw the prints of a boy's shoe, rather bigger than Ned's, in several of the beds, and hanging on the quick-hedge were some tattered fragments of a red cotton handkerchief checked with white. "I know this handkerchief," said Ned; "it is Tom Andrews's; I have often seen him with it tied round his neck. It must be he who stole my apricots."

"You cannot be sure that it is Tom who stole your apricots," rejoined his grandmother. "Many other people besides him have red handkerchiefs."

"But I am sure it can be no one but Tom; for only yesterday, when I told him about my apricots, and the money I expected to get for them, he said he wished he knew how to get some, that he might have money too. Oh! if I could but get hold of him--"

Again he stopped, and thought of our Saviour's words; then, turning to his grandmother, he said, "Whoever it is that has robbed us of the fruit, I forgive him, even if it is Tom Andrews."

Ned went to work that day with a heavy heart. Tom Andrews was in high glee; for his master had said he would give him another week's trial. Ned told him of the misfortune that had happened to him, and thought that Tom looked rather confused. He also remarked that his companion had not got the red handkerchief on that he usually wore about his neck; and he asked him the reason.

"I tore it last night, scrambling through a hedge," replied Tom carelessly.

"How came you to be scrambling through a hedge last night?" inquired Ned.

"What makes you ask me that question?" returned the other, sharply.

"Because," answered Ned, fixing his eyes upon him, "because the person who stole my apricots left part of a red handkerchief hanging on our hedge."

So saying, he struck Ned a blow on the face with his fist, before Ned was aware what he was going to do.

Ned was very much tempted to strike in return; but just as he raised his arm, something seemed to whisper that he ought not to do so; and, drawing back a few steps, he called after Tom, who was beginning to run away, saying,

"You need not be afraid of me. I am not going to strike you, though you did strike me; because it is wrong to return evil for evil."

"Fine talking, indeed!" rejoined Tom, tauntingly. "I know very well the reason why you will not strike me again. You dare not, because I am the biggest and strongest. You are afraid of me."

Now Ned was no coward. He would have fought in a good cause with a boy twice his size; and he was very much provoked at the words and manner of his companion.

He had a hard struggle with himself not to return the blow; but he kept firm to the good resolution he had made, and went away.

As he was returning home very sorrowful, he could not help thinking how happy he had expected to be that evening; and he regretted extremely that his grandmother would have no cloak to keep her warm in the cold weather. Still, the recollection that he had patiently borne the blow and insulting speeches of Tom, and thus endeavoured to put in practice the good precepts he had been taught, consoled him, and made him feel less sad than he would otherwise have been.

"How did you get that black eye, Ned?" asked his grandmother, as soon as she saw him. "I hope you have not been fighting."

"No, grandmother, indeed I have not," replied Ned; and he told her how it had happened.

His grandmother said that he was a good boy to have acted as he did, and added, "It makes me happier to find that you behave well, than twenty new cloaks would."

The next day, at dinner time, when Ned went into the little outhouse where he and Tom usually ate this meal, he found Tom sitting there crying.

"What makes you cry, Tom?" inquired Ned.

"Because I have no dinner," was the reply.

"How happens that?" asked Ned.

"Because, now father's out of work, mother says she can only give us two meals a-day. I only had a little bit of bread this morning; and I shall have nothing else till I go home in the evening, and then she will give me a cold potato or two."

Ned's grandmother had given him that day for his dinner a large slice of bread, and a piece of cold bacon. Ned had been working hard, and was very hungry. He could have eaten all the bread and bacon with pleasure, and felt certain that if he had got no dinner and Tom had, Tom would not have given him any of his. He recollected that Tom had never in his life shown him any kindness; that, a fortnight ago, when Tom had had four apples given him, he had eaten them all himself, without even offering him part of one; and, above all, he called to mind that Tom was in all probability the person who had robbed him of his apricots, and killed his favourite apricot-tree.

But he remembered our Saviour's command, "Do good to them that hate you;" and though Tom was a bad boy, yet it grieved Ned to see him crying with hunger, whilst he himself had food to eat. So he divided both the bread and the bacon into two equal shares, with his knife, and then, going up to Tom, gave him one portion, and desired him to eat it. Tom looked at Ned in some surprise, and then, taking the food that was offered him, ate it in a ravenous manner, without saying a word.

"He might just have thanked me," thought Ned to himself; but he forbore to tell Tom so.

Ned always read a chapter in the Bible to his grandmother every night when he came home from work. It happened that this evening the chapter fixed on was the twelfth of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. He was much struck by one of the verses in it: "Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head."

"Grandmother," said Ned, when he had concluded the chapter, "I understand the first part of this verse very well, it is plain enough; but what is meant by the words, 'for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head?'"

His grandmother replied, that this passage had once puzzled her; but that an old lady with whom she had lived when she was a girl, and who kindly took great pains in explaining different parts of the Bible that were hard to be understood, had made this quite clear to her.

"She told me," continued his grandmother, "that the Apostle alludes to the custom of melting gold and other metals by fire; and his meaning is, that as coals of fire melt and soften the metals on which they are heaped, so by kindness and gentleness we may melt and soften our enemy, and make him love, instead of hating us."

Ned thanked his grandmother for this explanation, and then was silent for some little time.

"Perhaps," he said to himself, "if I go on being kind to Tom Andrews, I shall at last make him love me, and leave off teasing me and saying ill-natured things."

He would not tell his grandmother that he had given Tom part of his dinner, for fear she should another day give him more; and he knew she could not do this without robbing herself.

Tom's father remained out of work for several weeks; and Tom would have been obliged to go without a dinner most days, if Ned had not regularly given him half his.

For some time Tom received his companion's kindness sulkily, and without appearing at all grateful; but at last Ned's good-natured conduct appeared to touch him, and he said--

"How kind you are to me, Ned! though I am sure I have done nothing to deserve kindness from you. Father often says he wishes I was more like you; and I do think I should be happier if I was, for you always seem cheerful and contented, though you work harder than I do."

"I like working," answered Ned; "nothing makes me so dull as being idle. Besides, as grandmother says, people are far more likely to do wrong when they are not employed. You know the lines in the hymn,--

'For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do,'"

Tom looked down and coloured.

Ned, who had not meant to give him pain by what he said, added, on observing Tom's confusion--

"I have so many things I like to do when I go home after work, that I don't deserve praise for not being idle."

"I wish I had anything I liked to do when work is over," returned Tom; "but I have nothing to do but play, and I soon get tired of that."

"So do I," rejoined Ned. "I like a game of ball or cricket every now and then as well as anybody; but it is a great waste of time, to say the least of it, to spend all one's spare hours in play; besides, as you say, we get tired, and do not enjoy play if we have too much of it."

"What do you do of an evening, that is so pleasant?" inquired Tom.

"Why I keep our little garden in order;--that takes up a good deal of time; and I write a copy, and do a sum or two, and read the Bible to grandmother."

"I should like that very well," observed Tom, "all except reading the Bible."

"Oh, do not say so!" exclaimed Ned; "surely you do not mean it."

"Oh, dear no! that I do not; but grandmother sometimes explains what is hard, and tells me a great many pleasing things about the manners of the country where our Saviour and his Apostles lived. I never am happier than when I read to her, and she talks to me about what I have read."

"Well," said Tom, "mother hears me read a chapter now and then, but she always seems to think it a trouble; and so I read as fast as I can, to get it the sooner over. Father commonly says, he's too tired to listen."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet