father and mother as they talked together. But he had another teacher.

Down the street of the village, which was very straggling, with nearly
as many little gardens as houses in it, there was a house occupied by
several poor people, in one end of which, consisting just of a room and
a closet, an old woman lived who got her money by spinning flax into
yarn for making linen. She was a kind-hearted old creature--widow,
without any relation near to help her or look after her. She had had one
child, who died before he was as old as Willie. That was forty years
before, but she had never forgotten her little Willie, for that was his
name too, and she fancied our Willie was like him. Nothing, therefore,
pleased her better than to get him into her little room, and talk to
him. She would take a little bit of sugar-candy or liquorice out of her
cupboard for him, and tell him some strange old fairy tale or legend,
while she sat spinning, until at last she had made him so fond of her
that he would often go and stay for hours with her. Nor did it make much
difference when his mother begged Mrs Wilson to give him something
sweet only now and then, for she was afraid of his going to see the old
woman merely for what she gave him, which would have been greedy. But
the fact was, he liked her stories better than her sugar-candy and
liquorice; while above all things he delighted in watching the wonderful
wheel go round and round so fast that he could not find out whether her
foot was making it spin, or it was making her foot dance up and down
in that curious way. After she had explained it to him as well as she
could, and he thought he understood it, it seemed to him only the more
wonderful and mysterious; and ever as it went whirring round, it sung a
song of its own, which was also the song of the story, whatever it was,
that the old woman was telling him, as he sat listening in her high soft
chair, covered with long-faded chintz, and cushioned like a nest. For
Mrs Wilson had had a better house to live in once, and this chair, as
well as the chest of drawers of dark mahogany, with brass handles, that
stood opposite the window, was part of the furniture she saved when she
had to sell the rest; and well it was, she used to say, for her old
rheumatic bones that she had saved the chair at least. In that chair,
then, the little boy would sit coiled up as nearly into a ball as might
be, like a young bird or a rabbit in its nest, staring at the