However, the next morning the hens received attention at the proper time. And so far as that one duty was concerned he did not need another lesson, but he was not yet made over into the prompt boy which his father desired him to be. That woodbox! O, boys! Do you shrug your shoulders and say, "I don't blame him?" The woodbox is a dread to boys, I well know. Howard Grinnell did not particularly dislike the work of filling the box, but he was never quite ready to do it. He was always putting it off until he had finished reading the morning paper, or been the rounds of the garden and meadows to see if there were any new flowers out or any new birds' nests, and at length the school bell would ring and he would go off to school having forgotten that there was such a thing in the wide world as a woodbox. One morning Mrs. Grinnell said, "Howard, Bridget will need a box full of wood to-day; she has a large ironing."
"Yes, ma'am," said Howard dreamily from the depths of an arm-chair where he had established himself with a new orchid and a botany. Mrs. Grinnell was busy, and gave the matter no farther attention until two hours later Bridget announced that the wood was out.
"Dear me!" said Mrs. Grinnell, "that boy went off without filling the box, after all!" After a moment's thought she said: "Well, Bridget, Howard cannot expect his clothes to be ironed with cold irons. You may hang all his things upon the bars without ironing, and he will have to wear them so. Perhaps you and I can get wood enough for the rest."
Bridget thought it a good joke to play upon Master Howard, and her good nature returned in view of the sport she would have at the boy's expense.
You may imagine that Howard did not enjoy wearing his rough-dried garments, but he was forced to do so. And as he was a somewhat fastidious boy, it was quite a trial to go to school in that plight.
It was by such lessons as this that Mr. and Mrs. Grinnell sought to cure Howard of his fault; and one day when Mrs. Grinnell was looking over same mottoes, she discovered one handsomely illuminated which struck her as being just the one for her son's room. It was this:
"Diligent in business, serving the Lord!"
Faye Huntington.
