es his sister 80'--pretty present for
a girl, isn't it?" said Billy with an air of supreme contempt. "Could
_you_ stand such stuff--say?"

I put on my instructive face and answered: "Well, my dear Billy,
you know that arithmetic is necessary to you if you mean to be an
industrious man and succeed in business. Suppose your parents were to
lose all their property, what would become of them without a little son
who could make money and keep accounts?"

"Oh!" said Billy with surprise. "Hasn't father got enough stamps to see
him through?"

"He has now, I hope; but people don't always keep them. Suppose they
should go by some accident when your father was too old to make any more
stamps for himself?"

"You haven't thought of brother Daniel--"

True; for nobody ever had, in connection with the active employments of
life.

"No, Billy," I replied; "I forgot him; but then, you know, Daniel is
more of a student than a business man, and--"

"Oh, Uncle Teddy! you don't think I meant he'd support them? I meant I'd
have to take care of father and mother and of all when they'd all got to
be old people together. Just think! I'm eleven and he's twenty-two; so
he is just twice as old as I am. How old are you?"

"Forty, Billy, last August."

"Well, you aren't so awful old, and when I get to be as old as you
Daniel will be eighty. Seth Kendall's grandfather isn't more than that,
and he has to be fed with a spoon, and a nurse puts him to bed and
wheels him around in a chair like a baby. That takes the stamps, _I_
bet! Well, I'll tell you how I'll keep my accounts; I'll have a stick
like Robinson Crusoe, and every time I make a toadskin I'll gouge a
piece out of one side of the stick, and every time I spend one I'll
gouge a piece out of the other."

"Spend a what!" said the gentle and astonished voice of my sister Lu,
who, unperceived, had slipped into the room.

"A toadskin, ma," replied Billy, shutting up Colburn with a farewell
glance of contempt.

"Dear! dear! where does the boy learn such horrid words?"

"Why, ma! don't you know what a toadskin is? Here's one," said Billy,
drawing a dingy five-cent stamp from his pocket. "And don't I wish I had
lots of 'em!"

"Oh!" sighed his mother, "to think I should have a child so addicted to
slang! How I wish he were like Daniel!"

"Well, mother," replied Billy, "if you wanted two boys just alike you'd
oughter had twins. There ain't any use of my trying to be like Daniel
now whe