~T was long after supper time.
had cleared off the table, and gone into the kitchen to write a let-
ter home to Sweden; and there was no one in the dining-room ex-
cepting a mouse that was lazily picking up crumbs the baby had
dropped. Besides all this, I know in another way, too; for the

Iam sure of this, because Hannah

baby was fast asleep in his bed up-stairs.
It is perfectly ridiculous for me to call him the baby, because he was really
a big boy half-past five years old, but everybody called him that, so I must, I

suppose.

Mamma came into the hall, and what do you suppose she saw there the

  

seen eee

But nothing stirred under the bed-clothes.

“ Ba-by!”

“Ump!”

“Are you awake?”
“Perhaps so; to-morrow.”
‘*No, now.”

 

very firstthing? Itwas nothing more or
less than a big iron engine, with ared
smokestack, and only three wheels. It
must have had four wheels at first, but
now it just got along the best way ‘it
could on three. Now, that engine did
not belong to baby at all; andmamma
guessed just right when she suspected
that her boy had taken it that very
afternoon when he was over playing
with Jim Boggs. I tell you what
mamma did not like that at all, so
she started up-stairs with all her
might.

“Baby!”

By this time he was sitting up in bed, trying to rub his eyes open with his

eight fingers and two thumbs.

Mamma was standing there with the candle, and looking just as savage as
that particular mamma could possibly look. '
“Baby, whose engine is that down-stairs?”