oratory.

Willie rose also and went straight to his own room. Having looked all
round it thoughtfully several times, he went out again on the landing,
whence a ladder led up into a garret running the whole length of the
roof of the cottage.

"My room would do for grannie," he said to himself; "and I could sleep
up there. A shake-down in the corner would do well enough for me."

He climbed the ladder, pushed open the trap-door, crept half through,
and surveyed the gloomy place.

"There's no window but a skylight!" he said; and his eyes smarted as if
the tears were about to rush into them. "What _shall_ I do? Wheelie will
be useless!--Well, I can't help it; and if I can't help it, I can bear
it. To have grannie comfortable will be better than to look out of the
window ever so much."

He drew in his head, came down the ladder with a rush, and hurried off
to school.

At supper he laid his scheme before his father and mother.

They looked very much pleased with their boy. But his father said at
once--

"No, no, Willie. It won't do. I'm glad you've been the first to think of
something--only, unfortunately, your plan won't work. You can't sleep
there."

"I'll engage to sleep wherever there's room to lie down; and if there
isn't I'll engage to sleep sitting or standing," said Willie, whose
mother had often said she wished she could sleep like Willie. "And as I
don't walk in my sleep," he added, "the trap-door needn't be shut."

"Mice, Willie!" said his mother, in a tone of much significance.

"The cat and I are good friends," returned Willie. "She'll be pleased
enough to sleep with me."

"You don't hit the thing at all," said his father. "I wonder a practical
man like you, Willie, doesn't see it at once. Even if I were at the
expense of ceiling the whole roof with lath and plaster, we should
find you, some morning in summer, baked black as a coal; or else, some
morning in winter frozen so stiff that, when we tried to lift you, your
arm snapped off like a dry twig of elder."

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed Willie; "then there would be the more room for
grannie."

His father laughed with him, but his mother looked a little shocked.

"No, Willie," said his father again; "you must make another attempt. You
must say with Hamlet when he was puzzled for a plan--'About my brains!'
Perhaps they will suggest something wiser next time."

Willie lay so long awake that night, thinking, that _Wheelie_ pulled him
before he had had