"I have set my foot on your moccasins there, my boy!" and Elster, for once, laid down the law, with a look and tone of decision which put it in force right there on the spot. "To church your red tomfooleries never shall go while I have a membership there!"
"Well, then, if not to church, to grandmam's quilting?"
"I rather think you will have to wait for the day. Grandmam will hardly get up a quilting just to give you a chance of showing off your moccasins."
"And how long shall I have to wait for the day?"
"Monday—Wednesday—eight—ten days," replied Elster, counting them off on her fingers.
Giving a backward jerk of the heel, expressive of impatience, the spoilt boy exclaimed: "Oh, how long a time to wait! Where's the use of a feller's always waiting?"
"A kick in the ribs may make old Blue Blaze quicken her pace, but if you want Old Time to quicken his you must neither kick him nor seize him by the forelock, but catch him by the tail and do your best to hold him back; then he'll go fast enough, I warrant you! So go along with your moccasins and put them away in the chest, or the rats and mice will gnaw them, as rats and mice are always sure to do with everything of the sort we set our hearts too much on. Then go to the woods and play like a bird. Pow-wow will go along with you and show you how—be glad to do it."
Sprigg and Pow-wow went out to play, but the dog was more like a bird than the boy. The glad light was gone from his heart. His heart was in the chest with his treasures—his treasures denied him as too precious for every day and Sunday too. Barefooted and out of sorts, he dragged along through the idle hours. He should have been hoeing corn; and, when the night was come and the jay-bird went to his nest with a thankful heart, Sprigg went to his with nothing of the kind, and, therefore, had no pleasant dreams. Nor was this all. That night, for the third time in his life—the second being the night before, and the first the night before that—Sprigg went to his rest without saying "Now I lay me down to sleep," the sweet old words his mother had taught him to speak when he could scarcely speak at all, and which he could never fitly and truly speak again, so long as the red moccasins and the like vain fancies filled his heart. The next day, iller at ease than ever—all but desperate—he went to his mother, where, banging away at her ponderous loom, she was just finishing a nice piece of flax linen for him and pap, thus renewing the subject: