icketty old cupboard should chance to fall
upon us, and crush us, and send us dancing into all eternity. Hey!
mamma, what do you say?"

He had jumped up, stroked back his hair, and stood before her, with a
make-believe of buttoning his gloves, and settling his necktie.

"Foolish fellow!" she said. "What has come to him to-night? He sings,
he falls in love, and now in the dead of night, he comes and calls upon
his own old mother to stand up and dance with him! Is this what comes
of spoiling sons, and letting them grow over their mother's heads?"

"Suffer me to say you are mistaken, honoured madam," he began, with
mock devotion. "It is, on the contrary, your duty, as guardian of my
unguarded youth--your serious duty--to convince yourself that I really
do grow in grace, and make progress in those ornamental branches of
education, which are indeed most foreign to my nature. At the close of
my course of dancing-lessons, it might be considered proper to hold
some species of examination."

She raised her eyes to his, with a look so grave, as to tone down his
mischievous mood at once.

"It is time to have done with nonsense," she said; and her voice
sounded almost sharp. "I would say goodnight, and leave you to yourself
this moment, only I see that you are not nearly ready for sleep, nor
will be, for ever so long--go, fetch the book. Even if you should not
learn much to-night--which indeed does not seem likely--it may help us
to get this nonsense out of your head, and that is always something
gained."

He sighed as he walked towards the narrow bookshelf upon the cupboard.
"Well, I suppose I must obey--for a change," he said, with a shake of
his head. "Only if I should never know anything more of Barbarossa,
than that his beard was red, it will be nobody's fault but yours."

"Well, and I suppose--for a change--I must temper my justice with
mercy," she said, returning to a jesting tone. "Leave that history, and
come and sit down here at my feet, and let me talk to you of gods and
heroes; and if you are a good boy, and pay attention, I will shew you
the pictures afterwards, as a reward."

She took up the little blue volume she had been looking through before.
"I only found this yesterday," she said, "in the lumber-room upstairs;
the title is 'Goetterlehre,' and it was edited in the last century by a
man called Moritz. There are some good verses of Goethe's in it; I know
you will like them."

He resumed his place at her