Who he was

Of course his real name was not Master Sunshine.

Who ever heard of a boy with a name like that?

But his mother said that long before he could speak he chose the name for himself, for even as a baby he was full of a cheery good humor that was always sparkling out in his winning smiles and his rippling laugh. He was a good-natured, happy child from the time that he could toddle about; and he was very young when he began to give pleasure to his friends by serving them in all the little ways within his power.

The very golden curls that topped his small head glistened as if they had caught and imprisoned the glory of the morning sun; and it really did seem as if a better name could not be found for the merry, helpful little fellow than Master Sunshine.

His real name was a very different affair Frederick Alexander Norton and his boy friends called him Freddy for short. His little sister Lucy called him “buzzer” and Suns’ine; and Almira Jane, the help, who made the brownest and crispest of molasses cookies, and the most delicious twisted doughnuts, said he was a “swate angel of light,” except at such times as she called him a “rascalpion.”

Master Sunshine never stopped to argue with Almira Jane when she called him a “rascalpion.” He knew that this was a plain sign that she was getting “nervous;” and when Almira Jane was nervous, it was always best for small boys to be out of the way.

A little later, when the kitchen floor had been scrubbed, and the stove polished like a shiny black mirror, and the bread-dough had been kneaded and set to rise, he knew he would be a welcome visitor again.

Perhaps that was one of the many reasons why people loved him so. He was always considerate. He had the good sense not to keep on asking questions and offering help when it was best to go quietly away. Somehow he always felt sure that his turn would come presently, and that Almira Jane would be sorry she had called him such a hard name, and would be only too pleased to have him look over the beans for the bean-pot, and fill the wood-box, and do all the other little kitchen chores that he delighted in.

There were sure to be pleasant times after one of Almira Jane’s nervous attacks. When she was quite over her flurry and worry, Daisy, the Maltese cat, would crawl out of her hiding-place under the stove, and arch her tail, and purr contentedly as she rubbed her long, graceful body against the table-legs; while Gyp, the pet dog, would hurry in from the dog-house under the shade of the orchard-trees, and jump on Almira Jane’s shoulder, and she would be as pleased as possible over his knowing ways. At such times Master Sunshine was very fond of Almira Jane.

He loved Lucy with a steady affection, too, though she pulled his curls sometimes until he fairly expected to lose the whole of his golden locks. She needed a great deal of patient amusement, too, and she was not very considerate of his belongings.

One day he was very angry, and his hand was lifted in anger against her.

The trouble was that she had torn in two his favorite picture of elephants in his animal book. The little girl was quite unaware of the mischief her chubby fingers had wrought, but she knew very well by the look of Master Sunshine’s overcast face that in some way she had displeased him.

So, pursing up her lips in a smile not unlike his own sunshiny one, she lisped, in funny imitation of her mother,

“Never mind, Suns’ine, little sister’s sorry;” and, strange to say, at her words the angry passion left him, and tears of shame stood in his blue eyes.

“Of course,” he said afterwards, in telling the story to his mother, “I know that Lucy didn’t know the sense of what she was saying, but she did seem to know how to get at the “sensibliness” of me. Just imagine, mother, how bad we would all have felt if I had struck my own dear sister that God sent us to take care of!”

And 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 the legs curved slightly outwards.

But the real secret the real heart and soul of the matter was that being bow-legged was a great, great grief to Master Sunshine. No one but his father ever knew this not even his mother, or Almira Jane, or Lucy. It was too sore a subject to speak of freely.

It was on the day when he first put on trousers that his troubles began. It seemed to him that people began then to make such odd remarks about him; and the strangest thing of all was that they would seem to quite forget that he heard every word they said, and that they never seemed to understand how they were hurting his feelings.

For a time he solved the difficulty in a clever way. He begged his mother to make him some loose sailor suits with long bagging legs.

They served their purpose well, and so long as they lasted no one ever spoke of the tender subject that he wished to avoid. But still he never felt comfortable about them in his mind.

It seemed such a cowardly thing to hide his legs like that, and he did so want to be manly in all his ways.

So, after a long talk one day with his father, as they sauntered hand in hand down a shady country road, with Gyp sporting and playing alongside, he decided to face the trouble bravely, and wear knickerbockers like other boys of his age. And, instead of sulking or fretting about what he could not help, he set himself to making allowances for other people.

“Father says that every one has his trials,” he would say to himself sagely; “and I dare say that most folks have worse trials than mine. So when Almira Jane is ‘nervous,’ and Lucy is fretful, or mother has her bad headaches, I must just remember to be ’specially good to them. Maybe, after all, bow-leggedness isn’t the worst thing to put up with.”