e, "I wonder
what any one can see in such a little goose as Helen, _to take on_
about? Little simpleton! she's afraid of her own shadow! Never mind!
wait awhile! When he finds out how lazy she is, he'll put her on a
lower, harder seat than his lap."

It was true that Helen soon lost cast with the uncompromising enemy of
idleness. She had fallen into a habit of reverie, which made it
impossible for her to fix her mind on a given lesson. Her imagination
had acquired so much more strength than her other faculties, that she
could not convert the monarch into the vassal. She would try to memorize
the page before her, and resolutely set herself to the task, but the
wing of a snow-bird fluttering by the window, or the buzzing of a fly
round the warm stove, would distract her attention and call up trains of
thought as wild as irrelevant. Sometimes she would bend down her head,
and press both hands upon it, to keep it in an obedient position; but
all in vain!--her vagrant imagination would wander far away to the
confines of the spirit-land.

Master Hightower coaxed, reasoned with her, scolded, threatened, did
every thing but punish. He could not have the heart to apply the black
ruler to that little delicate hand. He could not give a blow to one who
looked up in his face with such soft, deprecating, fearful eyes--but he
grew vexed with the child, and feeling of the edge of his ruler
half-a-dozen times, declared he did not know what to do with her.

One night Mittie lingered behind the rest, and told him that if he would
shut up Helen somewhere alone, _in the dark_, he would have no more
trouble with her; that her father had said that it was the only way to
make her study. It was true that Mr. Gleason had remarked, in a jesting
way, when told of Helen's neglect of her lessons, that he must get Mr.
Hightower to have a dark closet made, and he would have no more trouble;
but he never intended such a cruelty to be inflicted on his child. This
Mittie well knew, but as she had no sympathy with her sister's fears,
she had no compassion for the sufferings they caused. She thought she
deserved punishment, and felt a malicious pleasure in anticipating its
infliction.

Master Hightower had no dark closet, but there was room enough in his
high, dark, capacious desk, for a larger body than the slender, delicate
Helen. He resolved to act upon Mittie's admirable hint, knowing it would
not hurt the child to enclose her awhile in a nice, war