“Why?” said Diamond. “I only think about it.”

“That's just why,” said the mother.

“Why is that why?” persisted Diamond, for he had not yet learned that

grown-up people are not often so much grown up that they never talk like

children--and spoilt ones too.

“Mrs. Coleman is none so poor as all that yet. No, thank Heaven! she's

not come to that.”

“Is it a great disgrace to be poor?” asked Diamond, because of the tone

in which his mother had spoken.

But his mother, whether conscience-stricken I do not know hurried him

away to bed, where after various attempts to understand her, resumed and

resumed again in spite of invading sleep, he was conquered at last, and

gave in, murmuring over and over to himself, “Why is why?” but getting

no answer to the question.

A FEW nights after this, Diamond woke up suddenly, believing he heard

North Wind thundering along. But it was something quite different. South

Wind was moaning round the chimneys, to be sure, for she was not very

happy that night, but it was not her voice that had wakened Diamond. Her

voice would only have lulled him the deeper asleep. It was a loud, angry

voice, now growling like that of a beast, now raving like that of a

madman; and when Diamond came a little wider awake, he knew that it was

the voice of the drunken cabman, the wall of whose room was at the head

of his bed. It was anything but pleasant to hear, but he could not help

hearing it. At length there came a cry from the woman, and then a scream

from the baby. Thereupon Diamond thought it time that somebody did

something, and as himself was the only somebody at hand, he must go and

see whether he could not do something. So he got up and put on part of

his clothes, and went down the stair, for the cabman's room did not open

upon their stair, and he had to go out into the yard, and in at the next

door. This, fortunately, the cabman, being drunk, had left open. By

the time he reached their stair, all was still except the voice of the

crying baby, which guided him to the right door. He opened it softly,

and peeped in. There, leaning back in a chair, with his arms hanging

down by his sides, and his legs stretched out before him and supported

on his heels, sat the drunken cabman. His wife lay in her clothes upon

the bed, sobbing, and the baby was wailing in the cradle. It was very

miserable altogether.

Now the way most people do when they see anything very miserable is to

turn away from the sight, and try to forget it. But Diamond began as

usual to try to destroy the misery. The little boy was just as much one

of God's messengers as if he had been an angel with a flaming sword,

going out to fight the devil. The devil he had to fight just then

was Misery. And the way he fought him was the very best. Like a wise

soldier, he attacked him first in his weakest point--that was the baby;

for Misery can never get such a hold of a baby as of a grown person.

Diamond was knowing in babies, and he knew he could do something to make

the baby, happy; for although he had only known one baby as yet, and

although not one baby is the same as another, yet they are so very much

alike in some things, and he knew that one baby so thoroughly, that he

had good reason to believe he could do something for any other. I have

known people who would have begun to fight the devil in a very different

and a very stupid way. They would have begun by scolding the idiotic

cabman; and next they would make his wife angry by saying it must be her

fault as well as his, and by leaving ill-bred though well-meant shabby

little books for them to read, which they were sure to hate the sight

of; while all the time they would not have put out a finger to touch the

wailing baby. But Diamond had him out of the cradle in a moment, set

him up on his knee, and told him to look at the light. Now all the light

there was came only from a lamp in the yard, and it was a very dingy and

yellow light, for the glass of the lamp was dirty, and the gas was bad;

but the light that came from it was, notwithstanding, as certainly

light as if it had come from the sun itself, and the baby knew that, and

smiled to it; and although it was indeed a wretched room which that lamp

lighted--so dreary, and dirty, and empty, and hopeless!--there in the

middle of it sat Diamond on a stool, smiling to the baby, and the baby

on his knees smiling to the lamp. The father of him sat staring at

nothing, neither asleep nor awake, not quite lost in stupidity either,

for through it all he was dimly angry with himself, he did not know

why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was

miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of

the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond,

speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love

speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice

depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai,

it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St.

John it was perfect blessedness.

By and by he became aware that there was a voice of singing in the room.

This, of course, was the voice of Diamond singing to the baby--song

after song, every one as foolish as another to the cabman, for he was

too tipsy to part one word from another: all the words mixed up in his

ear in a gurgle without division or stop; for such was the way he spoke

himself, when he was in this horrid condition. But the baby was more

than content with Diamond's songs, and Diamond himself was so contented

with what the songs were all about, that he did not care a bit about the

songs themselves, if only baby liked them. But they did the cabman good

as well as the baby and Diamond, for they put him to sleep, and the

sleep was busy all the time it lasted, smoothing the wrinkles out of his

temper.

At length Diamond grew tired of singing, and began to talk to the baby

instead. And as soon as he stopped singing, the cabman began to wake up.

His brain was a little clearer now, his temper a little smoother,

and his heart not quite so dirty. He began to listen and he went on

listening, and heard Diamond saying to the baby something like this, for

he thought the cabman was asleep:

“Poor daddy! Baby's daddy takes too much beer and gin, and that makes

him somebody else, and not his own self at all. Baby's daddy would never

hit baby's mammy if he didn't take too much beer. He's very fond of

baby's mammy, and works from morning to night to get her breakfast and

dinner and supper, only at night he forgets, and pays the money away for

beer. And they put nasty stuff in beer, I've heard my daddy say, that

drives all the good out, and lets all the bad in. Daddy says when a man

takes a drink, there's a thirsty devil creeps into his inside, because

he knows he will always get enough there. And the devil is always crying

out for more drink, and that makes the man thirsty, and so he drinks

more and more, till he kills himself with it. And then the ugly devil

creeps out of him, and crawls about on his belly, looking for some other

cabman to get into, that he may drink, drink, drink. That's what my

daddy says, baby. And he says, too, the only way to make the devil come