IN THE WOODS.
"O, ma," said Horace, coming, into the house one morning glowing with excitement, "mayn't I go in the woods with Peter Grant? He knows where there's heaps of boxberries."
"And who is Peter Grant, my son?"
"He is a little boy with a bad temper," said aunt Louise, frowning severely at Horace.—If she had had her way, I don't know but every little boy in town would have been tied to a bed-post by a clothes-line. As I have already said, aunt Louise was not remarkably fond of children, and when they were naughty it was hard for her to forgive them.
She disliked little Peter; but she never stopped to think that he had a cross and ignorant mother, who managed him so badly that he did not care about trying to be good. Mrs. Grant seldom talked with him about God and the Saviour; she never read to him from the Bible, nor told him to say his prayers.
Mrs. Clifford answered Horace that she did not wish him to go into the woods, and that was all that she thought it necessary to say.
Horace, at the time, had no idea of disobeying his mother; but not long afterwards he happened to go into the kitchen, where his grandmother was making beer.
"What do you make it of, grandma?" said he.
"Of molasses and warm water and yeast."
"But what gives the taste to it?"