Читать книгу Little Alfred - L. A. Holdich - Страница 4

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Up! let us to the fields away,

And breathe the fresh and balmy air:

The bird is building in the tree,

The flower has open’d to the bee,

And health, and love, and peace are there.

Mary Howitt.

Alfred Penrose was a little boy who lived in a pretty town on the banks of the Connecticut River. We will call the place in which Alfred lived Norwood, although that is not its real name.

When the weather was warm Alfred’s father would often take him and his older brothers in a little boat upon the river. Sometimes they would row to a pleasant creek, over which large trees drooped their branches until they touched the water. There Alfred’s father and brothers would catch fish, which they carried home to have cooked for breakfast the next morning. They were not cruel enough to use worms for bait. They baited their hook with pieces of raw meat, or dough, which the fish liked quite as well as worms.

While Alfred’s brothers helped their father to fish, the little boy would steal away from them to a small brook which ran through the meadow where his father allowed him to go by himself, because there was no danger. Mr. Penrose did not like to have Alfred too near him when he was fishing. The little fellow’s merry laugh and loud voice frightened away the fish. So, as we have said, Alfred would steal away to the little brook, and launch the shingle boat, with its paper sails, which his brother Harry had made for him; or pick his way across the brook on the stepping stones to the sunny bank, in search of the beautiful flowers which peep forth from among the withered leaves of the last year. And handfuls of the pretty light blue flower called innocence would he gather, for it is found everywhere in its season, smiling in wood and meadow, by shaded streams, and in the glittering sunshine.

O, very pleasant was the budding spring-time, and the rich, ripe summer season, to little Alfred!

Then they would often bring their dinner with them, and eat it by the pebbly brook, which sung its sweet tune to them as it danced along, and mingled its voice with the merry birds which saluted them from the trees above their heads.

Alfred’s father always received his son’s little love-offering of flowers with a smile.

“I am glad my little boy loves flowers,” he would say. “They are God’s beautiful presents to us. How sweetly Jesus speaks of flowers in Matthew vi, 28-30:

“Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

“Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”