Читать книгу The Young Pilgrim: A Tale Illustrative of "The Pilgrim's Progress" онлайн

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“What’s he taken into his head?” said Madge.

“You remember the bag which the lady dropped at the stile, when she was going to the church by the wood?”

Madge nodded assent, and her brother continued: “What fun we had in carrying off and opening that bag, and dividing the things that were in it! Father had the best of the fun of it though, for he took the purse with the money.”

“I know,” cried Ben, “and mother had the handkerchief with lace round the edge, and E. S. marked in the corner. We—more’s the shame!—had nothing but some pence, and the keys; and Mark, as the biggest, had the book.”

“Ah! the book!” cried Jack; “that’s what has put him out of his wits!”

“No one grudged it him, I’m sure,” said Ben, “precious little any of us would have made out of it. But Mark takes so to reading, it’s so odd; and it sets him a thinking, a thinking: well, I can’t tell what folk like us have to do with reading and thinking!”

“Nor I!” cried both Madge and Jack.

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said the latter, as stretched on the grass he amused himself with shying stones at the sparrows, “I shouldn’t wonder if his odd ways had something to do with that red mark on his shoulder!”