in the parish knew the boy and his story. From his gentleness and
lovingkindness to live things, there were who said he was half-witted;
others said he saw ghosts. The boys of the village despised, and some
hated him, because he was so unlike them. They called him a girl
because where they tormented he caressed. At this he would smile, and
they durst not lay hands on him.

The days are long in boyhood, and Clare could do a many things in
one. There was the morning, the forenoon, and the long afternoon and
evening! He could help on the farm; he could play with ever so many
animals; he could learn his lessons, which happily were not heavy; he
could read any book he pleased in his father's library, where
_Paradise Lost_ was his favourite; he could nurse little Maly. He had
the more time for all these that he had no companion of his own age,
no one he wanted to go about with after school-hours. His father was
still his chief human companion, and neither of them grew tired of the
other.

The most remarkable thing in the child was the calm and gentle
greatness of his heart. You often find children very fond of one or
two people, who, perhaps, in evil return, want to keep them all to
themselves, and reproach them for loving others. Many persons count it
a sign of depth in a child that he loves only one or two. I doubt it
greatly. I think that only the child who loves all life can love right
well, can love deeply and strongly and tenderly the lives that come
nearest him. Low nurses and small-hearted mothers dwarf and pervert
their children, doing their worst to keep them from having big hearts
like God. Clare had other teaching than this. He had lost his father
and mother, but many were given him to love; and so he was helped to
wait patiently till he found them again. God was keeping them for him