"Now, Tommy," said Helen, "I'll hear your lesson." "No, you won't," sang Tommy to his tune. "Why not?" "'Cause I can't say it." "Then we'll learn it together. F-a-t-h, what does that spell?" "Don't know," said Tommy, his finger in his mouth. "See now if you can't remember," urged Helen, giving him each letter phonetically. "Don't want to know," said Tommy. Here, little Sarah, who had heard the lesson many times, informed him what the desired syllable ought to be, and inferred the rest herself. Whereupon Helen proceeded to the next word. But there Tommy proved obdurate, not only didn't know, and didn't want to know, but refused to hear, and presented such a fearful example to his younger sister, that his elder one had no resource but to transfer the cloak from Sarah to Tommy, and to shut him up in the dark closet. That done, she laid the sticks together in the grate, that was never made for sticks, and blew up a nice blaze, that warmed and lighted all the damp and dark old room; and, taking little Sarah in her arms, rocked and sung her away to sleep. It was a dismal room, and had been long deserted,--possibly owing to its former dreariness, and possibly to the report of its haunted space and shadow; for over the chimney-piece was the panel with the pale, proud face of old General Fotherington's dead wife painted on it, which every midnight he was once believed to return and visit. But when other parts of the house had fallen into hopeless disrepair, Helen had taken Tommy's little hatchet, and had felled the lofty lilac-hedge that obscured all the southern windows of the room, had cleaned the old paint, made good use of a bucket of white-wash, reset the broken glass herself, and then moved chattels and personals into the vacancy, and given it a more homelike appearance than it had worn for half a century. If the truth were known, Helen's chief fancy for the room, shaky and insecure as both floor and ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,--for she had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her shiftless father, when put to his trumps, had sold to adorn the halls of some upstart with forefathers. "Tommy," said she softly, when little Sarah slept, "can you tell me what w-a-t-e-r spells?" "No," said the stolid Tommy. "Is it dark in there, Tommy?" asked she, half relenting, and yet half wishing to excite his fears enough to conquer his obduracy. "I don't know," answered Tommy, quite willing to converse, "I've got my eyes shut." "Very well," said Helen, and went on with her low lullaby, which Tommy stoutly, but ineffectually, attempted to join. The wind was beginning to rise and clatter at the casements, and sing its own tune round the gable-corner; the dark had quite fallen, and the room was gloomy and vivid by turns with the fitful flashes of the firelight.