Witlie’s Education, 9

 

doing which people would give money; and he saw
that some of those ways were better than others,
and he thought his father’s way the very best of all.
I give these as specimens of the lessons he learned
by listening to his father and mother as they talked
together. But he had another teacher.

Down the street of the village, which was.very
straggling, with nearly as many little gardens as
houses in it, there was a house occupied by several
poor people, in one end of which, consisting just of
a room and a closet, an old woman lived who got
her money by spinning flax into yarn for making
linen, She was a kind-hearted old creature—a
widow, without any relation near to help her or
look after her. She had had one child, who died
before he was as old as Willie. That was forty
years before, but she had never forgotten her little
Willie, for that was his name too, and she fancied
our Willie was like him, Nothing, therefore; pleased
her better than to get him into her little room, and
talk to him. She would take a little bit of sugar-
candy or liquorice out of her cupboard for him,
and tell him some strange old fairy tale or legend,
while she sat spinning, until at last she had made
him so fond of her that he would often go and stay
for hours with her. Nor did it make much differ-
ence when his mother begged Mrs Wilson to give
him something sweet only now and then, for she
was afraid of his going to see the old woman