Chapter 16
Section 16 of A Cup of Sweets That Can Never Cloy or Delightful Tales for Good Children. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. A Cup of Sweets by Elizabeth Semple and Elizabeth Sandham
Fido Polina, going to spend the afternoon with her little cousins, arrived at their door the very instant that they were dragging out a poor little dog, once so great a favorite that it was fed with every kind of nicety and reposed when it was inclined to sleep on a beautiful silk cushion.
What are you going to do with poor Fido? inquired Polina. Oh, that nasty thing, replied her cousin Emily. Pray, look how ugly it is grown. I would not keep it in the house on any account.
I am going to give it to those boys you see at the gate. I do not care what they do with it. My brother Charles has given me a most beautiful little creature. Come in and I will show it to you. Stop, stop!
For pity's sake, exclaimed Polina. Pray do not give poor Fido to those boys. To be worried and tormented to death. Let me have him. I will carry him home to my hospital and will take care of him as long as he lives.
Fido had unfortunately strolled into the kitchen, where certainly neither young ladies nor their dogs can have any business, when the cook was very busy in getting ready for dinner. I hope without intending such a piece of cruelty, she had thrown a quantity of boiling water over the poor little creature's head and back, and scalded him in so terrible a manner that no one thought he could have lived through the day.
Emily was so angry with the cook and shed so many tears when she beheld the agony of her favorite that one would have thought she had the best heart in the world and that she had a very great regard for it. But as soon as it was recovered and she saw it had lost one eye and that all the side of its head and its whole back was without hair, she could not bear the sight of it.
It was turned out of the parlor and kicked about by everybody, glad to pick up any bone it could meet with and to sleep in a corner on straw instead of the silk cushion it had been accustomed to. And at length, had not Paulina arrived in time to save it, would have been given to half a dozen unfeeling boys who would soon have destroyed it.
Paulina was very little pleased with her cousin Emily on this occasion, for her own disposition was very different. She was so humane, so kind to everybody and every creature in distress, that she was beloved by all who knew her. She had quite a little hospital of sick and lame animals and birds, a dog which had had
its leg broken by being caught in a gin, a cat with one ear, the other having been bit off by a large mastiff and a blind squirrel. She had a little goldfinch in a cage which had had its wings torn off by a cat and as it could no longer fly down from its perch to drink and return when it liked. She had contrived a little ladder on which it could hop up and down without any difficulty,
a blackbird almost frozen to death which she had picked up in the snow but which never recovered the use of one of its legs, sung very merrily. However, in its cage, for it was well fed and taken care of, and one or two blind cocks which she had bought from boys who had been fighting them and were going to throw at them by way of finishing the fun, as they called it, and several lame hens, become so by some
accident or other, lived comfortably in her little poultry yard, for she took care to feed all her pensioners herself and never trusted the care of them to any other person. Paulina had great pleasure in procuring every comfort she could for her poor animals and her papa and mama to encourage her kind and humane disposition, increased her pocket money that she might be able to purchase barley for her poultry and seed for her birds.
Her brothers Elsa, who were at school, often sent her presents for that purpose. As she grew up, her humanity was shown to her fellow creatures in distress, as much as it had been in her childhood to the dumb creation, and as God had given her the means of doing good, she freely indulged herself in acts of kindness, for which she received a thousand thanks and blessings wherever she appeared.
She was beloved by all her neighbors, both poor and rich, everything prospered with her, and she was happy and contented, as she deserved to be. End of section 16
