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A Chapter that you can Skip

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"So Hudden jumped in first and he went straight to the bottom. In a minute he came up to the top and shouted: 'Help! help!'

"'He's calling for help,' says Donald; 'wait now till I go in and help him.'

"'Stay where you are,' says Dudden; 'haven't you cattle enough already? It's my turn to have some of them now.' And in he jumped, and Hudden and Dudden was both drowned. And then Donald went home and looked after his cattle and his farm, and soon he made money enough to take the two farms that Hudden and Dudden had left, besides his own.

"And that's the way," said Terence, "to get on in this world or any world. Get the better of them that's trying to get the better of you, and don't hope for any help from fairies or ghosts."

"Terence," said Mrs. O'Brien, "there's a little that's right in what you say, and there's more that's wrong. Depend on yourself and don't look for help from Good People or ghosts. So much of what you say is right. But Donald was not honest and he got on by tricks, and I don't want you or Kathleen to be that way. You'll not get on that way; you'll only come to grief. But I want you to be kind and helpful to mortals and Good People because it's right to be so, not to get any reward. The reward you may get or you may not in this world, but it's not that I want you to work for. And I'll tell you a story now to show you what I mean.

"There was a poor little bit of a boy once, and he had a hump on his back. He made his living by plaiting rushes and straw into hats and baskets and beehives, and he could do it better than anybody else for miles around. I don't know what his right name was, but the people called him Lusmore, after the flower of that name. The flower, you know, is the one that some call fairy-cap—the Lord between us and harm!—and others call it foxglove. And they called him after it, because he would always be wearing a sprig of it in his cap. And in spite of having a crooked back, which often makes a body sulky, he was a good-natured little fellow, and never had a bad word or a bad thought for anybody.

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