bution approaching, did not see
fit to wait for it. He darted up the stairs and crept into his bunk with
the lightness and agility of a squirrel.

"I'm a-bed! Say, ma, I'm a-bed!" he cried, eager to save the excellent
lady the trouble of ascending the stairs. "I'm 'most asleep a'ready!"

"It 's a good thing for you you be!" said Mrs. Ducklow, gathering up the
garment he had left behind the door. "Why, Taddy, how you did tear it!
I've a good notion to give ye a smart trouncing now!"

Taddy began to snore, and Mrs. Ducklow concluded that she would not wake
him.

"It _is_ mean cloth, as he says!" she exclaimed, examining it by the
kerosene lamp. "For my part, I consider it a great misfortin that shoddy
was ever invented. Ye can't buy any sort of a ready-made garment for
boys now-days but it comes to pieces at the least wear or strain, like
so much brown paper."

She was shaping the necessary patch, when the sound of wheels coming
into the yard told her that the person so long waited for had arrived.

"That you?" said she, opening the kitchen-door and looking out into the
darkness.

"Yes," replied a man's voice.

"Ye want the lantern?"

"No: jest set the lamp in the winder, and I guess I can git along.
Whoa!" And the man jumped to the ground.

"Had good luck?" the woman inquired in a low voice.

"I'll tell ye when I come in," was the evasive answer.

"Has he bought me a drum?" bawled Taddy from the chamber-stairs.

"Do you want me to come up there and 'tend to ye?" demanded Mrs.
Ducklow.

The boy was not particularly ambitious of enjoying that honor.

"You be still and go to sleep, then, or you'll git _drummed_!"

And she latched the stairway-door, greatly to the dismay of Master
Taddy, who felt that some vast and momentous secret was being kept from
him. Overhearing whispered conferences between his adopted parents in
the morning, noticing also the cautious glances they cast at him, and
the persistency with which they repeatedly sent him away out of sight on
slight and absurd pretences, he had gathered a fact and drawn an
inference, namely, that a great purchase was to be made by Mr. Ducklow
that day in town, and that, on his return, he (Taddy) was to be
surprised by the presentation of what he had long coveted and teased
for,--a new drum.

To lie quietly in bed under such circumstances was an act that required
more self-control than Master Taddy possessed. Accordingly he stole down
stairs and listene