"Mother! mother!" he called out; "I'm going to school! I'm not going to work any more,—I mean not all day. Mrs. Miles has settled it! And O mother! I'm to go there this evening for a big bundle of clothes. She's made me a jacket out of a coat of her husband's, and that was what she wanted my other jacket for. Oh! oh! I'm so glad!"
"That is news!" exclaimed Mrs. Talbot.
"I'm to be advanced," he added; "she says so, and paid by the hour; and I shall earn just as much working between schools as I do now. O mother! isn't Mrs. Miles splendid?"
In the evening, Johnny went for the bundle; and the lady accompanied him home to see how the new clothes fitted.
"It's my first trial," she said, laughing; "and I'm very proud to think that I've succeeded so well."
Johnny turned round and round, as directed, to show first the back, then the shoulders and front.
"I find I have a natural gift at tailoring," cried Mrs. Miles. "I shall throw up making hose, and devote myself to my new calling. Just see that sleeve, now! It looks as well as if it were bought from a fashionable store."
"I don't know how to thank you," murmured the widow, laughing through her tears. "I should have tried to cut them over, of course; but I'm afraid I should have made a bungling piece of work of it."