gifts. It may here be boldly stated that our hero was not above eating candy, which he divined was what was coming. Will was not mistaken in this instance, for his humane friend soon approached him and put something round and[25] hard into his hand, saying, “Don’t fret, little man; here’s a bull’s-eye for you.” [25] Quietly as this kind action was done, it did not escape the old lady’s sharp eyes, and she thus gave vent to her indignation: “O dear, what are we coming to! Here’s a man rewarding, actually rewarding, a boy for being wicked!” However, neither Will nor his parents overheard her virtuous comments. Will was wholly engrossed with his bull’s-eye, which was about the size of a ten-year-old boy’s marble. Though originally white and striped with red bands, it was now more or less discoloured and very sticky. Will slipped the bull’s-eye into his mouth, but immediately spat it out. “All covered with dirt and sweat, and as hard as an iron button,” he muttered. “It was kind of the man to give it to me, but I can’t eat it.” But what should he do with it? Clearly, the floor would be the best place for it; and so, while his father’s attention was engaged with a cartoon, and his mother’s with a wayside chapel, he stooped and laid it softly on the floor, unseen and unheard. Then he chuckled, admiring his great sagacity, not knowing that an ordinary bull’s-eye may be dropped in almost any part of a railway carriage in motion without arresting attention. Would that a novelist who regularly “anticipates” were here! How he might expatiate! Beginning thus, he might go on exhausting ink-bottles and filling pages at pleasure:— “Ah! little could Will dream, little could any one present dream, what destiny had in store for that bull’s-eye! How different was its fate from that which the benevolent gentleman supposed it would be!” But it is cowardly and wicked in a writer to anticipate. The kind hearted Yankee left the car soon after giving Will the bull’s-eye, so that he was not a witness of what was to happen. The rejected bull’s-eye, set in motion by the car, gradually[26] made its way into the middle of the passage between the two rows of seats, here it stopped. If noticed
Prev.
Back
Top