a lock in her house to-morrow, Charlie;
it will neither lock nor unlock. And the bottle-jack has gone wrong; it
went off with such a noise when she was winding it up yesterday: she
wants you to see if you can do anything to it."

Charlie's face crimsoned with pleasure: his great delight was in locks,
clocks, engines--anything mechanical, in fact; but the only way in which
he could indulge his love for such things was in taking off, oiling,
putting to rights, and screwing on again all the locks in their own
house, or any of the neighbours that would let him. As he often
conquered refractory locks, he became quite of importance in "the Row,"
and was often sent for. He had an old timepiece that some one had given
him, and would spend hours in taking it to pieces and putting it
together again; but he could not prevail upon his mother to let him
touch "the clock."

The lessons were soon learned, and then Charlie got to his painting.
What a happy night he had, cutting out pictures from some illustrated
papers, colouring them, and chattering incessantly, unless he was
putting in any particular touches that he seemed to think required
profound silence and holding of the breath!

"There, mother!" he exclaimed, holding up in triumph a picture of a very
stylish lady that he had finished, "that's the way you should be dressed
if I had my way; isn't she a beauty?"

"She looks gay indeed, Charlie," said his mother, smiling; "but I'm
afraid that style of dress would not quite suit me. Let me see, what has
she on? A bright blue dress, a scarlet cloak"--"Like Mrs. Greenwell's,
you know, mother," interrupted Charlie, "and a blue bonnet with a green
feather on it."

"Wouldn't a blue feather or a black one have looked better?" said his
father, looking up from his newspaper; "blue and green are not
considered pretty together."

"Well, I don't know why they shouldn't, father." Charlie felt touched at
his taste being called into question. "The forget-me-nots, the
bluebells, and the blue hyacinths grow amongst green leaves and grass,
and I'm sure God would not have put them there if they didn't look
beautiful."

"You have conquered me there, Charlie," said his father, laughing;
"still I am not reconciled to the blue bonnet with the green feather."

When it was Charlie's bedtime, he gathered up all the cuttings of paper
and burned them, washed his paint-brushes, and put everything tidily
away into a drawer that his mother had given h