Lost Gip by Hesba Stretton

"WE are to be friends, you see," said the lame boy, cheerfully, as Sandy set him to lean against the parapet, while he picked up the crutch. "I thought I should never catch you, though I have been following you as fast as ever I could all the way from the place where Mr. Mason was preaching. You liked his sermon, didn't you? I saw you listening as if you'd never heard anything like that before; and it's every word true, and more. I thought I'd like to ask you how you liked it; and when you turned in here, I caught up with you. Now would you mind telling me who it was you were speaking to, half aloud?"

The lame boy's voice was frank, and his face was lighted up with a friendly smile, such as Sandy had never met before. He could not shut up his heart against him. Besides, he had been longing to speak to some one about little Gip; somebody who would neither jeer at him nor be angry with him, as the other fusee boys were. Yet he felt shy still, and his brown face grew crimson, and his tongue stammered, as he once more leaned over the parapet, and gazed down at the eddying of the water under the arch, with his head turned away from the stranger.