here, in his thoughtlessness,
he had thrown it upon the floor, hung it up in its proper place, and
then sprang up the stairs.

"Isn't dinner ready yet?" he said, with fretful impatience, his
whole manner changing suddenly. "I'm hungry."

"It will be ready in a few minutes, Clarence."

"I want it now. I'm hungry."

"Did you ever hear of the man," said Mrs. Hartley, in a voice that
showed no disturbance of mind, "who wanted the sun to rise an hour
before its time?"

"No, mother. Tell me about it, won't you?"

All impatience had vanished from the boy's face.

"There was a man who had to go upon a journey; the stage-coach was
to call for him at sun-rise. More than an hour before it was time
for the sun to be up, the man was all ready to go, and for the whole
of that hour he walked the floor impatiently, grumbling at the sun
because he did not rise. 'I'm all ready, and I want to be going,' he
said. 'It's time the sun was up, long ago.' Don't you think he was a
very foolish man?"

Clarence laughed, and said he thought the man was very foolish
indeed.

"Do you think he was more foolish than you were just now for
grumbling because dinner wasn't ready?"

Clarence laughed again, and said he did not know. Just then Hannah,
the cook, brought in the waiter with the children's dinner upon it.
Clarence sprang for a chair, and drew it hastily and noisily to the
table.

"Try and see if you can't do that more orderly, my dear," his mother
said, in a quiet voice, looking at him, as she spoke, with a steady
eye.

The boy removed his chair, and then replaced it gently.

"That is much better, my son."

And thus she corrected his disorderly habits, quieted his impatient
temper, and checked his rudeness, without showing any disturbance.
This she had to do daily. At almost every meal she found it
necessary to repress his rude impatience. It was line upon line, and
precept upon precept. But she never tired, and rarely permitted
herself to show that she was disturbed, no matter how deeply grieved
she was at times over the wild and reckless spirit of her boy.

On the next day she was not very well; her head ached badly all the
morning. Hearing the children in the passage when they came in from
school at noon, she was, rising from the bed where she had lain
down, to attend to them and give them their dinners, when Aunt Mary
said--"Don't get up, Anna, I will see to the children."

It was rarely that Mrs. Hartley let any one do