l, I will; let me fink a minute," and Rob climbed into his mother's
lap, where he was cuddled, with the remark

"It is a family failing, this getting out of bed at wrong times. Demi
used to do it; and as for me, I was hopping in and out all night long.
Meg used to think the house was on fire, and send me down to see, and I
used to stay and enjoy myself, as you mean to, my bad son."

"I've finked now," observed Rob, quite at his ease, and eager to win the
entree into this delightful circle.

Every one looked and listened with faces full of suppressed merriment as
Rob, perched on his mother's knee and wrapped in the gay coverlet, told
the following brief but tragic tale with an earnestness that made it
very funny:

"Once a lady had a million children, and one nice little boy. She went
up-stairs and said, 'You mustn't go in the yard.' But he wented, and
fell into the pump, and was drowned dead."

"Is that all?" asked Franz, as Rob paused out of breath with this
startling beginning.

"No, there is another piece of it," and Rob knit his downy eyebrows in
the effort to evolve another inspiration.

"What did the lady do when he fell into the pump?" asked his mother, to
help him on.

"Oh, she pumped him up, and wrapped him in a newspaper, and put him on a
shelf to dry for seed."

A general explosion of laughter greeted this surprising conclusion, and
Mrs. Jo patted the curly head, as she said, solemnly,

"My son, you inherit your mother's gift of story-telling. Go where glory
waits thee."

"Now I can stay, can't I? Wasn't it a good story?" cried Rob, in high
feather at his superb success.

"You can stay till you have eaten these twelve pop-corns," said his
mother, expecting to see them vanish at one mouthful.

But Rob was a shrewd little man, and got the better of her by eating
them one by one very slowly, and enjoying every minute with all his
might.

"Hadn't you better tell the other story, while you wait for him?" said
Demi, anxious that no time should be lost.

"I really have nothing but a little tale about a wood-box," said Mrs.
Jo, seeing that Rob had still seven corns to eat.

"Is there a boy in it?"

"It is all boy."

"Is it true?" asked Demi.

"Every bit of it."

"Goody! tell on, please."

"James Snow and his mother lived in a little house, up in New Hampshire.
They were poor, and James had to work to help his mother, but he loved
books so well he hated work, and just wanted to sit and stud