Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed. PAUL HARLEY'S DREAM [AND] [JOE'S LETTER] _[A New Year's Story]_ BY A.L.O.E. _Author of "The Claremont Tales,"_ _"The White Bear's Den," &c._ [Illustration] MARSHALL BROTHERS, LTD. LONDON, EDINBURGH. CONTENTS. —————— PAUL HARLEY'S DREAM CHAPTER I. PAUL CHAPTER II. THE DREAM JOE'S LETTER CHAPTER I. CHAPTER II. PAUL HARLEY'S DREAM BY A.L.O.E. [Illustration: "It stops all fun!" cried Paul.] PAUL HARLEY'S DREAM A Tale. —————— CHAPTER I. _PAUL._ "I DO think it, and I will say it!" cried Paul Harley, with impatience. "Of all days in the week, a Sunday is the worst for New Year's Eve. It stops all fun, all larking, all hope of adventure. The New Year steals in like a thief when one is fast asleep in bed; unless, like that stupid fellow James Barton, one goes to some midnight service in church, to pray in the New Year, as he says. As if one had not had enough of that sort of thing all the Sunday!" "My dear boy—" began his grandfather, Silas Harley, an aged man, who sat with his arm leaning on the table, and his Bible before him. What Harley was going to say I cannot tell, for his grandson cut him short. Paul had been to school, and had learned many things there, of the knowledge of which he was not a little vain. But one thing, worth more than mere book-lore, he had not learned, which was to honour his father and his mother, which includes grandparents also. Paul was puffed up with pride, as a balloon is puffed out with gas. [Illustration] He stood erect by the table, grasping the back of a chair, and looking down on the venerable man before him, whose white hair Paul should have honoured, with a saucy look, which seemed to say, "I don't want advice from you!" "I wish that I could do this year what I did on last New Year's Eve," cried Paul. "A lot of us young fellows got on the top of a coach, and were off to Enfield for a spree at a farm. How the horses plunged through the snow; we were upset as nearly as could be!" "No great fun in that," observed Harley. "We had no end of snow-balling each other at Gale's farm, as long as daylight lasted," continued Paul; "and when night came on, we had dancing 'under the misletoe bough.' Ah! That night, what a merry one it was! We were just in the midst of a dance, hands round and down the middle, when the clock struck twelve, and in came the New Year!"