lf, and so I willingly sat down in the grass among the children
and began.

"Shall I tell about a lazy girl about as big as Chicken Little?" I asked.

"No, sir," she said; "tell about a lazy boy that was as big as Sunbeam."

Sunbeam laughed at this, and nodded her head for me to go on.

And so I began thus: "Little Lazy Larkin laughed and leaped, or longed
and lounged the livelong day, and loved not labor, but liked leisure."

"Ha! ha!" cried the Wee Chick; "that sounds so funny!"

"It's got so many l's, that's the reason," said Fairy.

"Tell it right," said Sunbeam.

"Well, then," I said, "Larkin was an indolent juvenile, fond of
mirthfulness and cachinatory and saltatory exercises--"

"I don't know what you mean!" said Fairy, just ready to get angry.

"Sech awful big words!" cried the Little Pullet; "they is as big--as
big as punkins!"

"I guess that's what they call hifalutin," said Sunbeam; "now do tell it
right."

And so I told it "right."

Larkin was an idle fellow, and was so utterly good-for-nothing, that he
came to be called "Lazy Larkin." It is a dreadful thing to get a bad name
when you are young. It sticks to you like a sand burr. Larkin would
neither work nor study. He did not even like good, hearty play, for any
great length of time, but was very fond of the play that boys call
_mumble-the-peg_, because, as he said, you could sit down to play it. He
fished a little, but if the fish did not bite at the first place, he sat
down; he would not move, but just sat and waited for them to come to him.

He had gone out to Bass Lake to fish, one day, in company with some other
boys, but they had put him out of the boat because he was too lazy to row
when his turn came. The others were rowing about, trolling for pickerel,
and he sat down on a point of land called "Duck Point," and went to
fishing. As the fish would not bite, he sat looking at them in the clear
water, and wishing that he was a fish--they had such a lazy time of it,
lying there in the sun, or paddling idly around through the water. He saw
a large pickerel lying perfectly still over a certain spot near the
shore. When other fish came near the pickerel, it darted out and drove
them off, and then paddled back to the same place again. Larkin dropped
his bait near by, but the fish paid no attention to it, and, indeed,
seemed to have nothing to do but to lie still in the same place.

"I wish I were a pickerel," said the lazy fellow; "I wouldn