omise, really," said Tommy, giving me a very grubby little hand;
"only please do look at me as you look at Charley, and don't leave me
all to myself again. I do get so tired of myself, you can't think."

I could, for once I had been left alone just in the same way; but I
didn't tell Tommy this, and only went to Mother, and soon he was playing
quite happily with us, and remained such a good boy. Nurse used to look
out for spots on his chest every day when she bathed him, for she was
quite sure that he must be going to be ill, but he wasn't; and he
remained so good we were quite sorry to part with him, for he was really
funny, and full of life. But as his mother kept very weak, Tommy was
sent to school; and so, when we went back from the seaside, after the
holidays were over, we did not meet again for nearly a year.

When we did meet, we hardly knew him again, he was such a jolly little
fellow. And when he grew confidential, which he did the third day of the
holidays, he said to me very solemnly, "I say, Hilda, if any little boys
and girls are as rude and naughty as I used to be once, I know how to
cure them. I shall first talk to them nicely, as your mother talked to
me, and then I shall let them alone. It cured me, I know. You don't ever
call me Tommy Torment now, do you, Hilda?"

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THE TRICYCLE.

My grandfather does give me nice things! Last birthday he gave me a
lovely box of tools, and he gave me the rocking-horse when I was quite
little, and the swing trapeze that hangs from the nursery ceiling, and
books and toys,--I can't remember them all now. But his last present was
best of all: it was a tricycle!

I was nine last birthday, and I couldn't help wondering--though it
sounds rather greedy--what grandfather would give me, because I thought
it wouldn't be a toy, and he had given me a book at Christmas, for he
said I was growing "quite a man."

When the birthday morning came, and I ran down to breakfast, there was
nothing at all from grandfather! I'm afraid I looked very disappointed
just at first; but presently we heard a little noise outside, and there
was grandfather himself, and a man with him, who was wheeling the
dearest little tricycle you ever saw.

It was rather hard work at first, and I soon got tired; but now I can go
ten miles with father, and not feel at all tired.

I'll tell you one thing that makes me so glad about my tric