h
enjoying himself! But Gibbie never dared hug his father except when
he was drunk--why, he could hardly have told. Relieved by his dumb
show, he would return, quite as an aged grimalkin, and again deposit
himself on the floor near his father where he could see his busy
hands.

All this time Sir George never spoke a word. Incredible as it may
seem, however, he was continually, off and on, trying his hardest to
think of some Sunday lesson to give his child. Many of those that
knew the boy, regarded him as a sort of idiot, drawing the
conclusion from Gibbie's practical honesty and his too evident love
for his kind: it was incredible that a child should be poor,
unselfish, loving, and not deficient in intellect! His father knew
him better, yet he often quieted his conscience in regard to his
education, with the reflection that not much could be done for him.
Still, every now and then he would think perhaps he ought to do
something: who could tell but the child might be damned for not
understanding the plan of salvation? and brooding over the matter
this morning, as well as his headache would permit, he came to the
resolution, as he had often done before, to buy a Shorter Catechism;
the boy could not learn it, but he would keep reading it to him, and
something might stick. Even now perhaps he could begin the course
by recalling some of the questions and answers that had been the
plague of his life every Saturday at school. He set his
recollection to work, therefore, in the lumber-room of his memory,
and again and again sent it back to the task, but could find nothing
belonging to the catechism except the first question with its
answer, and a few incoherent fragments of others. Moreover, he
found his mind so confused and incapable of continuous or
concentrated effort, that he could not even keep "man's chief end"
and the rosined end between his fingers from twisting up together in
the most extraordinary manner. Yet if the child but "had the
question," he might get some good of it. The hour might come when
he would say, "My father taught me that!"--who could tell? And he
knew he had the words correct, wherever he had dropped their
meaning. For the sake of Gibbie's immortal part, therefore, he
would repeat the answer to that first, most momentous of questions,
over and over as he worked, in the hope of insinuating something--he
could not say what--into the small mental pocket of the innocent.
The first, there