'There you are much mistaken,' said the old quavering voice. 'How
little you must have thought! Why, you don't seem even to know the
good of the things you are constantly doing. Now don't mistake me.
I don't mean you are good for doing them. It is a good thing to
eat your breakfast, but you don't fancy it's very good of you to do
it. The thing is good, not you.'

Curdie laughed.

'There are a great many more good things than bad things to do.
Now tell me what bad thing you have done today besides this sore
hurt to my little white friend.'
While she talked Curdie had sunk into a sort of reverie, in which
he hardly knew whether it was the old lady or his own heart that
spoke. And when she asked him that question, he was at first much
inclined to consider himself a very good fellow on the whole. 'I
really don't think I did anything else that was very bad all day,'
he said to himself. But at the same time he could not honestly
feel that he was worth standing up for. All at once a light seemed
to break in upon his mind, and he woke up and there was the
withered little atomy of the old lady on the other side of the
moonlight, and there was the spinning wheel singing on and on in
the middle of it!

'I know now, ma'am; I understand now,' he said. 'Thank you, ma'am,
for spinning it into me with your wheel. I see now that I have
been doing wrong the whole day, and such a many days besides!
Indeed, I don't know when I ever did right, and yet it seems as if
I had done right some time and had forgotten how. When I killed