Her Edward was a clever boy--a very clever boy, and such a wag that other boys did not care about his cleverness in any other direction. He made such capital fun wherever he went that it was a secondary matter that he could learn whatever he chose in no time, and do better than the best whatever he set about. He had his mother's keen, observant--one might say, experienced eye, under his curly light hair. He was not a handsome boy, but he had a bright, healthy face; brows that he knit very close when he was learning his lessons; and a mouth so incessantly working with fun that the question was how he ever kept grave while within the cathedral walls on Sundays. He had been destined, however, to spend a good many hours of gravity in a church, in the course of his life; for he was to have been a clergyman. It was the overthrow of this aim which was the heavy mortification to Mrs. Woodcock. Her husband thought they must give up the idea of a university education for Edward, and prepare him for trade. The mother tried to remember that we do not know what is good for us, and that it might possibly be better for her son to be in trade; but when some such reflection was immediately followed by a few sarcasms on human life or human beings, her husband knew that she had been thinking how her Edward would have been sure to distinguish himself at Oxford, if he could have been allowed to show what he could do. Before many years all was bright again. A good fortune was unexpectedly left to Mr. Woodcock. First, he paid all his creditors, debts, interest, and compound interest. Then he went into his old house again; and his old servants came back to him joyfully. His fellow-citizens made him mayor again; and the guild-feast was as handsome as before. There are many now who remember Edward's curly head in the mayor's carriage, and the wonder of his school-fellows as to how the boy would behave at the great dinner, among all the grown-up people. He sat beside his mother; and she would not laugh, say what he might, more than became her position as hostess to six hundred people. He asked the young ladies to dance very properly at the ball afterward; but he amused them so excessively that they were almost glad at last to change partners and rest from laughing. What a thing this would be to remember when he became a bishop! Of course the university was again before him; and his mother was now as gracious and right-minded in her shrewdness as ever.