Once within the house, Miss Hester was at an entire loss as to what to
do with her charge. She placed him in a chair, where he sat
disconsolately. She went to the bookshelves and laid her hand upon
"Pilgrim's Progress;" then she reflected that Freddie was just five
years old, and she allowed a smile to pass over her face. But her
perplexity instantly chased the expression away. "How on airth am I
a-goin' to do any work?" she asked herself. "I 'm shore I can't set down
an' tell that child stories all the time, as I 've heerd tell o' folks
doin'. What shall I do with him?" She had had a vague idea that the time
of children was taken up in some way. She knew, of course, that they had
to be washed and dressed, that they had to eat three times a day, and
after all to sleep; but what was to be done with them in the mean time?

"Oh," sighed the poor woman, "if he was only old enough to go to
school!" The wish was not entirely unmotherly, as motherhood goes in
these days, for it is not an unusual thing for mothers to send their
babes off to kindergarten as soon as they begin to babble, in order to
be relieved of the responsibility of their care. But neither wishes nor
hopes availed. It was a living, present situation with which Miss Hester
had to grapple. Suddenly she bethought herself that children like
pictures, and she secured from the shelf a copy of the "Bible
Looking-Glass." This she opened and spread out on the child's knees. He
glanced at it a moment or two, and then began to turn the leaves, his
eyes riveted on the engravings. Miss Hester congratulated herself, and
slipped out to work. The thought came to her, of course, that the
novelty of "Bible Looking-Glasses" could n't remain for ever, but she
put the idea by in scorn. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
The book was good while it lasted. It entertained the child and gave him
valuable moral lessons. This was the woman's point of view. To Fred
there was no suggestion of moral lessons. It was merely a lot of very
fine pictures, and when Miss Prime had gone he relaxed some of his
disconsolate stiffness and entered into the contemplation of them with
childish zest. His guardian, however, did not abandon her vigilance, and
in a few minutes she peeped through the door from the kitchen, where she
was working, to see how her charge got on. The sight which met her eyes
made her nearly drop the cup which she held in her hand and with which
she had been measuring o