CHAPTER VI.
HOW WILLIE LEARNED TO READ BEFORE HE KNEW HIS LETTERS.
The next day his thoughts, having nothing particular to engage them, kept brooding over two things.

These two things came together all at once, and a resolution was the consequence.

I shall soon explain what I mean.
The one thing was, that Hector had shown considerable surprise when he found that Willie could not read.

Now Willie was not in the least ashamed that he could not read: why should he be?
It was nowhere written in the catechism he had learnt that it was his duty to be able to read; and if the catechism had merely forgotten to mention it, his father and mother would have told him.

Neither was it a duty he ought to have known of himself--for then he would have known it.