CHAPTER III

HE 1S TURNED INTO SOMETHING HE NEVER WAS
BEFORE.

ITHERTO I have been mixing up summer

and winter and everything all together,

but now I am going to try to keep everything in
its own place.

Willie was now nine years old. His mother had
been poorly for some time—confined to her room,
as she not unfrequently was in the long cold
winters, It was winter now; and one morning,
when all the air was dark with falling snow, he ~
was standing by the parlour window, looking out
on it, and wondering whether the angels made it
up in the sky; for he thought it might be their
sawdust, which, when they had too much, they
shook down to get melted and put out of the way;
when Tibby came into the room very softly, and
looking, he thought, very strange.

“Willie, your mamma wants you,” she said;
and Willie hastened up-stairs to his mother’s room.
Dark as was the air outside, he was surprised to