urnips, and gives his sister thirty,'--pretty
present for a girl, isn't it?" said Billy, with an air of supreme
contempt. "Could _you_ stand such stuff,--say?"

I put on my instructive face and answered,--

"Well, my dear Billy, you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if
you mean to be an industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your
parents were to lose all their property, what would become of them
without a little son who could make money and keep accounts?"

"Oh," said Billy, with surprise. "Hasn't father got enough stamps to
see him through?"

"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
should go by some accident, when your father was too old to make any
more stamps for himself?"

"You haven't thought of brother Daniel--"

True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
life.

"No, Billy," I replied, "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
more of a student than a business man, and--"

"O Uncle Teddy! you don't think I mean he'd support them? I meant I'd
have to take care of father and mother, and him too, when they'd all got
to be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven, and he's twenty-two
so he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"

"Forty, Billy, last August."

"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you,
Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that,
and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed, and
wheels him round in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, I bet!
Well, I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick, like
Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a piece out
of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll gouge a piece
out of the other."

"Spend a _what_?" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu,
who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.

"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
glance of contempt.

"Dear, dear! Where does the boy learn such horrid words?"

"Why, ma, don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy,
drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I had
lots of 'em!"

"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted to
slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"

"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my try