“My poor little Fred,” said Bess, as she passed her hand gently across the boy’s forehead, and hot, tear-swollen eyes, “I wish so much, as much as you do, that it need not be so. But, Fred, half the battle lies, not in bearing your trouble, but in making the best of it. It is so hard, but each time you try it will grow easier. I read once of an old blind woman who called all the good things that came to her ‘chinks of light;’ and perhaps, if we try very hard, we shall find some ‘chinks’ for you.”
“I wish you could,” said the child, with a long, sobbing breath. “It’s all so dark.”
“Well, dear, isn’t Rob a ‘chink’? You dreaded him at first, just as you do Phil and Teddy now. But, now you are used to him, you enjoy his coming in. Wouldn’t it be so with the other boys?”
“’Tisn’t so bad with just one, but when they are all here”—
“Yes, but if you had once seen them, Fred, to wear off a little of the strangeness? It is a year that you have been away from them, but they are just the same dear boys that you used
