an a President or the minister. This is my first good
chance to work for ten years."

Which showed how old the Boy was. He was rather young to go off alone
on a journey, but a neighbor half a mile down the glary white road
was going his way, and would take him in charge. The neighbor was
lame, and the Boy thought he was going to take charge of the
neighbor. It was as well. Nobody had undeceived him.

In a little over half an hour--three-quarters at most--the trail of
the Boy was wiped out. Then the Patient Aunt and the Mother sat down
peacefully and undisturbed to their sewing. Everything was very
spruce and cleared up. The Mother was thinking of that, and of how
very, very still it was. She wished the Patient Aunt would begin to
sing, or a door would slam somewhere.

"Dear me!" she thought, with a tremulous little smile, "here I am
wanting to hear a door slam already! Any one wouldn't think I'd had a
special set of door nerves for years!" She started in to rock
briskly. There used to be a board that creaked by the west window.
Why didn't it creak now? The Mother tried to make it.

"Mary," she cried, suddenly and sharply--"_Mary!_"

"Mercy! Well, what is it, my dear? Is the house afire, or anything?"

"Why don't you talk, and not sit there as still as a post? You
haven't said a word for half an hour."

"Why, so I haven't,--or you either, for that matter. I thought we
were sitting here enjoying the calm. Doesn't it look too lovely and
fixed-up for anything, Bess? Seems like Sunday. _Don't_ you wish
somebody would call before we get stirred up again?"

"There's time enough. We sha'n't get stirred up again for a week,"
sighed the Mother. She seemed suddenly to remember, as a new thing,
that weeks held seven days apiece; days, twenty-four hours. The
little old table at school repeated itself to her mind. Then she
remembered how the Boy said it. She saw him toeing the stripe in the
carpet before her; she heard his high sweet sing-song:

"Sixty sec-unds make a min-it. Sixty min-its make a nour. Sixty hours
make--no; I mean twenty-four hours--make a d-a-a-y."

That was the way the Boy said it--God bless the Boy! The Mother got
up abruptly.

"I think I will go up and call on William," she said, unsteadily. The
Patient Aunt nodded gravely. "But he doesn't like to be interrupted,
you know," she reminded, thinking of the Boy's interruptions.

Up-stairs, the Father said "Come in," with remarkable alacrity. He
looked