"What, you here yet, Willy?" said his mother, opening the door. She
thought he had been an unusually long while filling the box; and so he
had. It was new business, doing it in this way, and it took time.

"I supposed you had gone, darling, for I didn't hear you whistle."

Willy whistled faintly, as he laid on the last stick. How lucky his
mother hadn't opened the door sooner!

"That's a nice big box full, my son. You please your mother this
morning. Come here and kiss me."

Willy went, and then Mrs. Parlin, who was a fine singer, and knew a
great many ballads, sang, smiling,--

"Ho! why dost thou shiver and shake,
Gaffer Gray?
And why doth thy nose look so blue?"

She often sang that when he came into the house cold, and then he would
sing in reply, with a voice almost as sweet as her own,--

"'Tis the weather that's cold,
'Tis I'm grown very old,
And my doublet is not very new,
Well-a-day!"

But he was not in a musical mood this morning: he felt in a hurry to be
off; and giving his mother a hasty kiss, he bounded away without his
shingle-covered spelling-book, and had to come back after it.

Foolish Willy! Did he think his mamma would not find out the deep-laid
plot, which had cost him so much labor? Children have no idea how bright
their parents are! It was a very cold day in December, and as Mrs.
Parlin kept up a roaring fire, she came before noon to the upright
sticks standing in the wood-box, as straight as soldiers on a march. She
sighed a little, and smiled a little, but said not a word, for she was a
wise woman, was Mrs. Parlin.

"Well, Willy boy," said she, when he came home from school, and had had
his supper of brown bread, baked apples, and milk, "come, let us have a
sing."

There was nothing Willy and his mother enjoyed better than a "sing," she
holding him in her lap and rocking him the while. He put his whole soul
into the music, miscalling the Scotch words sometimes so charmingly that
it was a real delight to hear him. People often stopped at the
threshold, I am told, or at the open window in summer, to listen to the
clear childish voice in such ballads as,--

"Fy! let us a' to the wedding,
For they will be lilting there;
For Jock's to be married to Maggie,
The lass wi' the gowden hair."

To-night it was "Colin's Come to Town;" and Willy's tones rang sweet and
high,--

"His very step has music in't,
As h