heir eyes
bent earnestly on the burning logs, thinking deeply, no doubt, and
looking as sober as tombstones in the light of a spring morning.

All on a sudden, Willie leaped from his chair, and gave a shrill
Indian war-whoop, that threw the whole bevy into a terrible panic;
making some of the smaller fry scream outright, and even Uncle
Juvinell to blink a little. "There," said the youngster, "is something
to ring in your ears for weeks hereafter, and never to be forgotten
even to your dying day. I heard it the other night at the Indian
circus, and have been practising it myself ever since. I fancy it must
be a pretty fair sample of the genuine thing, or it wouldn't have
scared you all up as it did." Whereupon Uncle Juvinell, frowning over
his spectacles with his brows, and laughing behind them with his eyes,
bade the young blood to pack himself into his chair again, and be
civil; at the same time threatening to put him on a water-gruel diet,
to bring his surplus spirits within reasonable bounds. Then all the
little folks laughed, not so much at what their uncle had said, as to
make believe they had not been frightened in the least; in which
Willie, the cunning rogue, joined, that, under cover of the general
merriment, he might snicker a little to himself at his own smartness.

"And now, my dear children," continued the good man, "hand me the
notes you have written down, that I may see what it is you would have
me explain."

"In five minutes' time after you began," said rattle-brained Willie,
"I became so much interested in the story, that I quite forgot all
about the notes, till it was too late to begin; but I was thinking all
along, that I should like to understand more clearly the difference
between a province and a colony, and"--

"Indeed, uncle," broke in Dannie, "you made every thing so clear and
plain as you went along, that I, for one, didn't feel the need of
writing down a single note."

"Then, Dannie," said his uncle, "that being the case, you can perhaps
enlighten your cousin Willie as to the difference between a colony and
a province."

Had his uncle called upon him to give the difference between Gog and
Magog, Daniel would have made the venture. So he promptly answered,--

"A province is a country, and a colony is the people of it."

Uncle Juvinell would have laughed outright at this answer; but he knew
it would mortify the young historian: so he only smiled, and said,--

"That will do pretty well