s,--but he had a cunning, tricky side to his nature which made him like
to play on the weaknesses of his grandmother and aunts. A sharp boy may
prove more than a match for four unsuspecting old women; and though in
this case they were in the right and he in the wrong, none the less was
he likely to succeed in his crafty plans.

He waited a few days to let opposition subside, and then began his
tricks. Charley's first victim was Aunt Hitty. She was a gentle,
weak-minded person, easy to persuade, and when Charley put his head into
her lap and called her coaxing names, and was sure she was too kind to
disappoint him in the thing he was set upon, her heart softened, and she
began to think that they all had been hard and unkind. "The dear boy
wants to go awful bad," she told Aunt Greg, and to her surprise Aunt
Greg did not fly out and scold as she had expected, but answered, with a
sigh, "I suppose sailing on the ocean _is_ beautiful!" Aunt Greg had
never seen the ocean in her life, but she was naturally romantic; and
Charley, who had been hard at work at the "Reader," had crammed her with
all sorts of poetical quotations and fancies concerning it. Flying fish,
coral islands, pole stars, dolphins, gallant mariners, wet sheets and
flowing seas, figured largely in these extracts, but there was no
mention whatever of storms, sharks, drowning, hard work, or anything
disagreeable. Aunt Greg could not see the charm of "wet sheets," but all
the rest sounded delightful; and gradually a picture formed itself in
her mind of a sea which was always blue and always smooth, and of
Charley standing on the deck of a ship repeating poetry to himself in
the moonlight; and her opposition grew feebler and feebler.

"Charley's got a lot of ideas in his head," she said one day when she
and her sisters were slicing apples for drying. "He aint no common boy,
Charley aint. He'll make a mark yet--see if he don't."

"Dear little fellow!" sighed Aunt Hitty. "_So_ lovin' and affectionate!
He used to be a little worrisome in his ways at times, but he's got all
over that!"

"Oh, has he?" snapped Aunt Prue. "I'd like to know when? He's been more
of a plague the last six weeks than ever in his life before. When he
upset that milk last night I could have cuffed him. It's the third time
since Wednesday. Mark, indeed! The only mark he'll ever make is a
dirt-mark on clean floors. The kitchen looks like Sancho at this moment.
I've washed it up twice as often