k
buttoned close about him, his boots pulled over his pants to his knees,
and his face glowing with health and from the cold air.

"O, mother!" said he, before he quite saw us,--and then he checked
himself; but, being encouraged to proceed, after making his
salutations, he said, in a more subdued tone, holding up a great red
apple, "See what the man, where we buy our things, sent you, mother. He
called me to him, and said, 'Give that to your mother, and tell her it
will be first-rate roasted.'"

As the mother smelt of it, and praised it, with her thanks, the boy hung
round her chair, and wished to say something.

"Well, what is it, my son?"

He spoke loud enough for us to hear, with his eyes glancing occasionally
at us, to be sure that we were not too intently looking at him, and,
with his arm resting in his mother's lap, he said:

"Do, please, let me go with my sled on the pond. It is real thick,
mother. Gustavus says that last evening it was as thick as his big
dictionary, and you know how cold it was last night, mother. Please let
me go; I won't get in; besides, if I do, it isn't deep--not more than up
to there; see here, mother!" putting his little mittened hand, with the
palm down, as high as his waist.

His mother looked troubled, and knew not what to say to him, but
remarked to us, "O, if I were well, and about the house, I could divert
him from his wish; but," said she to him, "if you will ask Gustavus to
take care of you, and bring you home when he comes, you may go."

Off he went, making fewer steps than there were stairs, and we heard his
merry voice without announcing his liberty.

"Here I am," said she to us, "with those three children, who come home
from school twice a day, and there is no mother below to receive them.
With the best of help, things sometimes go wrong, and the young woman
who sews for me cannot, of course, do for them what a mother could.
Nothing has tried my patience, in suffering, more than to hear the door
open, and my children come in from school, and to feel that I am
separated from them, within hearing, while I cannot reach them."

She controlled her feelings, and helped herself to conceal them by
turning to rock a cradle which stood behind her, though we perceived no
need of her doing so; yet we must all distrust our own ears in
comparison with a mother's. The child was a boy seven months old.

"Do you know," said she to me, "that I am thinking of joining your
church? I h