hildren. I'm past
expecting them to be grown-ups," his mother said kindly. "If you hadn't
been getting into the paint you most likely would have been getting
into something else. You have a genius for such mishaps. I'm glad it
was no worse."

Reassured, Carl grinned.

"I do seem to have a good many--" he hesitated, then added,
"misfortunes."

"Misfortunes, do you call 'em? Sure that's a pretty polite word to
apply to the things that manage to happen to you," sniffed Mrs.
McGregor. "I suppose it was a misfortune when you tumbled underneath
the watering cart; and a misfortune when you sat down in the wet tar! A
misfortune when you sent the snowball through the schoolroom window; to
say nothing of the creamcake you treated Jakie Sullivan to that
well-nigh killed him."

"I didn't know the creamcake was going to make him sick."

"No; 'twas just your misfortune. You seem to attract adventures like
that. Why, if I was to let you go into the cotton mills as you are
always begging to do you'd have every machine there out of order in
less than a week and yourself hashed up into little pieces into the
bargain."

She had touched upon an unlucky subject for instantly, with flaming
face, the lad confronted her.

"No, I wouldn't. I wish you would let me go into the mills, Ma. You
might let me try it. Ever so many boys no older than I are working
there and earning oodles of money. If we had more money we could----"

"We could be having an automobile, no doubt, and going to Palm Beach
winters," was the grim response. "Well, Palm Beach or not, you're not
going into any mill so long as we can keep body and soul together
without your doing it. You are going to get an education--you and Mary
too--if it costs me my life. I'm not going to have you grow up knowing
nothing and being nothing. Some day you'll see I was right and thank me
for it."

"I thank you now, Ma," declared Carl soberly. "But that doesn't make me
relish Latin and history any better."

"No matter if it doesn't. What you like is of no consequence," Mrs.
McGregor announced, with a majestic sweep of her hand. "The chief thing
is that you exercise your mind and learn how to use it. The Latin
itself amounts to nothing. It is like boxing gloves or a punching bag,
a thing that serves its turn to limber up your brain. It is learning to
think that counts."

Carl's face brightened.

"The teacher was saying something like that just the other day,"
asserted he eagerly.