He waited a few days to let opposition subside, and then began his tricks. Charley's first victim was Aunt Hitty. She was a gentle, weak-minded person, easy to persuade, and when Charley put his head into her lap and called her coaxing names, and was sure she was too kind to disappoint him in the thing he was set upon, her heart softened, and she began to think that they all had been hard and unkind. "The dear boy wants to go awful bad," she told Aunt Greg, and to her surprise Aunt Greg did not fly out and scold as she had expected, but answered, with a sigh, "I suppose sailing on the ocean _is_ beautiful!" Aunt Greg had never seen the ocean in her life, but she was naturally romantic; and Charley, who had been hard at work at the "Reader," had crammed her with all sorts of poetical quotations and fancies concerning it. Flying fish, coral islands, pole stars, dolphins, gallant mariners, wet sheets and flowing seas, figured largely in these extracts, but there was no mention whatever of storms, sharks, drowning, hard work, or anything disagreeable. Aunt Greg could not see the charm of "wet sheets," but all the rest sounded delightful; and gradually a picture formed itself in her mind of a sea which was always blue and always smooth, and of Charley standing on the deck of a ship repeating poetry to himself in the moonlight; and her opposition grew feebler and feebler. "Charley's got a lot of ideas in his head," she said one day when she and her sisters were slicing apples for drying. "He aint no common boy, Charley aint. He'll make a mark yet--see if he don't." "Dear little fellow!" sighed Aunt Hitty. "_So_ lovin' and affectionate! He used to be a little worrisome in his ways at times, but he's got all over that!" "Oh, has he?" snapped Aunt Prue. "I'd like to know when? He's been more of a plague the last six weeks than ever in his life before. When he upset that milk last night I could have cuffed him. It's the third time since Wednesday. Mark, indeed! The only mark he'll ever make is a dirt-mark on clean floors. The kitchen looks like Sancho at this moment. I've washed it up twice as often as ordinary, but as sure as I get it clean, in he comes stamping about with his muddy boots and tracks it from end to end. I believe he does it a-purpose." "O, Prue!" began Aunt Hitty, in a pleading tone, while Aunt Greg broke in, indignantly: "A-purpose! Well! Charley's mind is on other things, I can tell you, and it it's no wonder he sometimes forgets to wipe his feet." "Other things! Getting off to sea, I suppose you mean?" remarked Aunt Prue, grimly. "He's pulled the wool over your eyes and Hitty's finely, I declare. As for me, if he's goin' on to behave as he has done for a spell back, the sooner he quits the better. I wash _my_ hands of him," and Aunt Prue flounced into the buttery just as Grandmother came in at the other door.