that was so like Master Sunshine. He never willingly gave pain
to any living creature; and although he was sometimes careless and
forgetful, just like other boys, yet he was never known to be
wilfully unkind.

He loved his mother very dearly too, and perhaps it was from her
gentle ways that he had learned to be so thoughtful for others. He
told her all his joys, and all his secrets save one; and he dearly
loved the bedtime hour, when she read to him the stories that he
most admired,--stories of brave deeds were the kind he was always
asking for. But neither of them ever dreamed that the quiet
bedtime hours were teaching him to be a hero.

It did not seem possible that an eight-year-old boy could be a
hero such as one reads of in books.

Of course, he was going to do great things when he was a man. He
meant to make a great fortune, of which half was to be his mother's;
and if she chose to spend it on churches and missionaries and
schools, so much the better.

He was sure she would rather do this than buy herself handsome
dresses and diamond rings and ruby necklaces; and he was quite
certain that, when she wore her gray gown and her gray bonnet,
with the purple violets tucked under the brim, that she was the
most beautiful lady in the world.

His own share of the fortune he planned to spend in many ways. He
promised himself, among other things, that he would put up a
fountain in the village, where tired people and thirsty horses and
cows and dogs and birds would come for a drink. "I'd have a text
on it too," he would say, with his eyes shining with excitement.
"It should be, 'I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink.' And of
course 'I' would mean the Lord; for the Bible tells us how kind he
was to all helpless things, and I think he would be pleased to
have all the animals tended to as well as the thirsty people. I
wish I could be a man now, and they would not have to go thirsty
any longer."

He often told Almira Jane about the fountain too; and she always
said that it was a capital idea.

But it was to his father only that he told his secret.

It was a queer secret, and a very real trouble, too, I can tell
you.

Part of it was that Master Sunshine was just the least bit bow-legged.

Of course there could not be much of a secret about that. Lots of
people knew it quite well. In fact, if you looked carefully at the
well-shaped limbs in the trim blue stockings and neat knicker-bockers,
you could easily see that th