The Story of Patsy by Kate Douglas Wiggin

"If you make children happy now, you will make them happy twenty years hence by the memory of it. "

The next morning when I reached the little tin shop on the corner, -- a blessed trysting-place, forever sacred, where the children waited for me in sunshine, rain, wind, and storm, unless forbidden, -- there on the step sat faithful Patsy, with a clean and shining morning face, all glowing with anticipation. How well I remember my poor lad's first day! Where should I seat him? There was an empty space beside little Mike Higgins, but Mike's character, obtained from a fond and candid parent, had been to the effect "that he was in heaven any time if he could jest lay a boy out flat"! And there was a place by Moses, but he was very much of a fop just then, owing to a new "second-hand" coat, and might make scathing allusions to Patsy's abbreviated swallow-tail.