d to her husband. Grandma and aunt Madge baked a great
many loaves of cake and hundreds of cookies, and put in cans of fruit
and boxes of jelly wherever there was room. Aunt Louise made a nice
little dressing-case of bronze kid, lined with silk, and Grace made a
pretty pen-wiper and pin-ball. Horace whittled out a handsome steamboat,
with _green_ pipes, and the figure-head of an old man's face carved in
wood. But Horace thought the face looked like Prudy's, and named the
steamboat "The Prudy." He also broke open his savings-bank, and begged
his mother to lay out all the money he had in presents for the sick
soldiers.

"Horace has a kind and loving heart," said Margaret to Louise. "To be
sure he won't keep still long enough to let anybody kiss him, but he
really loves his parents dearly."

"Well, he's a terrible try-patience," said Louise.

"Wait a while! He is wilful and naughty, but he never tells wrong
stories. I think there's hope of a boy who _scorns a lie_! See if he
doesn't come out right, Louise. Why, I expect to be proud of our Horace
one of these days!"

CHAPTER VII.

IN THE WOODS.

"O, ma," said Horace, coming, into the house one morning glowing with
excitement, "mayn't I go in the woods with Peter Grant? He knows where
there's heaps of boxberries."

"And who is Peter Grant, my son?"

"He is a little boy with a bad temper," said aunt Louise, frowning
severely at Horace.--If she had had her way, I don't know but every
little boy in town would have been tied to a bed-post by a clothes-line.
As I have already said, aunt Louise was not remarkably fond of children,
and when they were naughty it was hard for her to forgive them.

She disliked little Peter; but she never stopped to think that he had a
cross and ignorant mother, who managed him so badly that he did not care
about trying to be good. Mrs. Grant seldom talked with him about God and
the Saviour; she never read to him from the Bible, nor told him to say
his prayers.

Mrs. Clifford answered Horace that she did not wish him to go into the
woods, and that was all that she thought it necessary to say.

Horace, at the time, had no idea of disobeying his mother; but not long
afterwards he happened to go into the kitchen, where his grandmother was
making beer.

"What do you make it of, grandma?" said he.

"Of molasses and warm water and yeast."

"But what gives the taste to it?"

"O, I put in spruce, or boxberry, or sarsaparilla."

"