nurse said, looking at him very gravely.

"I won't. Unless they ask me," he added. "Oh, nurse, let me do something
too. What can I do to help?"

"Thou canst gather such flowers as are left in the garden to make a
nosegay for thy mother's room; and set them in order in fair water. And
bid thy tutor teach thee a welcome song to say to them when they come
in."

Gathering the flowers and arranging them was pleasant and easy. Asking
so intimate a favor from the sour-faced tutor whom he so much disliked
was neither easy nor pleasant. But Dickie did it. And the tutor was
delighted to set him to learn a particularly hard and uninteresting
piece of poetry, beginning--

"Happy is he
Who, to sweet home retired,
Shuns glory so admired
And to himself lives free;
While he who strives with pride to climb the skies
Falls down with foul disgrace before he dies."

Dickie could not help thinking that the father and mother who were to be
his in this beautiful world might have preferred something simpler and
more affectionate from their little boy than this difficult piece whose
last verse was the only one which seemed to Dickie to mean anything in
particular. In this verse Dickie was made to remark that he hoped people
would say of him, "He died a good old man," which he did _not_ hope, and
indeed had never so much as thought of. The poetry, he decided, would
have been nicer if it had been more about his father and mother and less
about fame and trees and burdens. He felt this so much that he tried to
write a poem himself, and got as far as--

"They say there is no other
Can take the place of mother.
I say there is no one I'd rather
See than my father."

But he could not think of any more to say, and besides, he had a
haunting idea that the first two lines--which were quite the best--were
not his own make-up. So he abandoned the writing of poetry, deciding
that it was not his line, and painfully learned the dismal verses
appointed by his tutor.

But he never got them said. When the bustle of arrival had calmed a
little, Dickie, his heart beating very fast indeed, found himself led by
his tutor into the presence of the finest gentleman and the dearest lady
he had ever beheld. The tutor gave him a little push so that he had to
go forward two steps and to stand alone on the best carpet, which had
b