where it is; while the boy who easily grasps the words that stand for
a thing, is apt to think he knows the thing itself when he sees but
the wrapper of it--thinks he knows the church when he has caught sight
of the weather-cock. Mrs. Porson could see the understanding of a
thing gradually burst into blossom on the boy's face. It did not
smile, it only shone. Understanding is light; it needs love to change
light into a smile.

There was something in the boy that his parents hardly hoped to
understand; something in his face that made them long to know what was
going on in him, but made them doubt if ever in this life they
should. He was not concealing anything from them. He did not know that
he had anything to tell, or that they wanted to know anything. He
never doubted that everybody saw him just as he felt himself; his soul
seemed bare to all the world. But he knew little of what was passing
in him: child or man never knows more than a small part of that.

When first he was allowed to take the little one in his arms, he
sitting on a stool at his mother's feet, it was almost a new start in
his existence. A new confidence was born in his spirit. Mrs. Person
could read, as if reflected in his countenance, the pride and
tenderness that composed so much of her own conscious motherhood. A
certain staidness, almost sternness, took possession of his face as he
bent over the helpless creature, half on his knees, half in his
arms--the sternness of a protecting divinity that knew danger not
afar. He had taken a step upward in being; he was aware in himself,
without knowing it, of the dignity of fatherhood. Even now he knew
what so many seem never to learn, that a man is the defender of the
weak; that, if a man is his brother's keeper, still more is he his
sister's. She belonged to him, therefore he was hers in the slavery of