"You did just so, mother, when baby kept running to the stove, and you were afraid he would be burned up if he did not learn; so you let him burn his fingers a little mite. Oh, how he cried, and hid his face in your neck! But he knew he mustn't touch the stove again. Don't you remember how he would go toward it and then look at you and say so cunning, 'No! No! Berty burn!' And then he'd blow as you did on his poor fingers."
"Perhaps, mamma, God knew that if I went to school barefoot and came back without hurting me I should go on growing more and more disobedient, and so he let me hurt myself to save me a worse hurt as you did Berty."
"Yes, Dick, that is the right view to take of it. That is what St. Paul meant when he said: 'Now no chastening is for the present joyous, but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.'"
[CHAPTER VI.]
DICK'S ADVENTURE.
THANKSGIVING week and thanksgiving vacation came at last, but to the great disappointment of Richard, the ground was covered with snow. It was fortunate that he had already gathered one wagon load of evergreen at the time he learned to wind the wreaths at Mr. McIntosh's. This would give him employment for the vacation; and perhaps the snow would melt away before Christmas.
It was more of a job than he had imagined to wind the evergreen into wreaths. Though he worked with all his might, he only finished three the first evening.
Mrs. Stuart's mending prevented her helping him at this time; but she sat near and watched his progress. After he had retired, she took the basket of selected pieces, and finished the handsomest one yet made, in fifteen minutes.
"Let me help you plan your work," she said the next morning, after her wreath had been greatly admired.
"Eddy and perhaps Lyman, too, can help you pick over your evergreen during the day. Put the pieces ready to wind in a pile by themselves. This evening we will have a bee, and make up as many wreaths as we can."