WILLIE’S HAPPY DAY.

We drove up to the gate; papa lifted me out swiftly and carried
me up the little gravel path into the great, wide hall, and here
she met me—my grandmother.

I looked up in the wrinkled face of an old, old lady ina
black dress and a snowy cap, who bent down and took me up
suddenly, and kissed me, and then cried.

“Oh, Edward, my boy, is this the child?” she sobbed.

“This is the child—the little motherless child,” said my
father, and then he went out suddenly without so much as
shaking hands with her, and again my grandmother cried over
me. And from that hour I loved her. :

I felt at home at once in the old house. I went through its
wide, low, still rooms before it was dark. I followed the girl
when she went out into the yard to call the chickens to supper.
I saw her scatter the small corn-like flakes of yellow snow
among the great flock of chickens that crowded around her ;
I saw the boy going to feed the cows, and I wanted to go out
and see the little white calf inside the barn, but it was too late,
they told me, and I must wait for another day.

And so I lived on all my boyhood in that dear old house,
and now, in my manhood, long often for its peace and quietness.

 

WILLIE’S HAPPY DAY.

C4 { AVE you had a happy day, Willie?” asked Mrs. Caswell
of her little boy, as she sat down one pleasant winter
evening and took him in her lap. They lived about
twenty miles from Boston, and she had been in the city

all day, shopping.

“Yes, mamma, only I missed you. But you know you said
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