, "he is so wild and
thoughtless. He leaves the door open, throws his cap into the corner,
sets Bruno and Muff to growling, stops to play on his way home from
school, sings, whistles, shouts, hurrahs, and tears round like all
possessed."

If she could have looked into Paul's desk at school, she would have
found whirligigs, tops, pin-boxes, nails, and no end of strings and
dancing dandy-jims.

"Paul is a rogue," said the Pensioner. "You remember how he got on top
of the house awhile ago and frightened us out of our wits by shouting
'Fire! fire!' down the chimney; how we ran out to see about it; how I
asked him 'Where?' and says he, 'Down there in the fireplace, grandpa.'
He is a chip of the old block. I used to do just so. But there is one
good thing about him, he don't do mean tricks. He don't bend up pins and
put them in the boys' seats, or tuck chestnut-burs into the girls'
hoods. I never knew him to tell a lie. He will come out all right."

"I hope so," said Mrs. Parker.

Paul could look through the crevices between the shingles, and the
cracks in the walls, and behold the stars gleaming from the unfathomable
spaces. He wondered how far they were away. He listened to the wind
chanting a solemn dirge, filling his soul with longings for he knew not
what. He thought over his grandfather's stories, and the words he had
spoken about courage, truth, and honor, till a shingle clattering in the
wind took up the refrain, and seemed to say, Truth and honor,--truth
and honor,--truth and honor,--so steadily and pleasantly, that while he
listened the stars faded from his sight, and he sailed away into
dream-land.

Paul was twelve years old, stout, hearty, and healthy,--full of life,
and brimming over with fun. Once he set the village in a roar. The
people permitted their pigs to run at large. The great maple in front of
the Pensioner's house was cool and shady,--a delightful place for the
pigs through the hot summer days.

Mr. Chrome, the carriage-painter, lived across the road. He painted a
great many wagons for the farmers,--the wheels yellow, the bodies blue,
green, or red, with scrolls and flowers on the sides. Paul watched him
by the hour, and sometimes made up his mind to be a carriage-painter
when he became a man.

"Mr. Chrome," said Paul, "don't you think that those pigs would look
better if they were painted?"

"Perhaps so."

"I should like to see how they would look painted as you paint your
wagons."

Mr.