"This instant!--I won't wait a minute!" Kitty said in a provokingly commanding tone; and Tip went at it sullenly, saying, with every spiteful drive of his axe through the pine board which he had picked up, "It's no use; I _cant_ do that sum, and I ain't going to try. I don't know anything, and never will. I've done it over fifty times, and twisted it every way I can think of. There's no sense to it, any way,--sixteen sheep _stood him in_ two dollars apiece. What does that mean, I'd like to know? He had forty sheep and twenty-five cows. I know it all by heart; but I can't do it, and that's the whole of it. I wish his sheep had choked to death, and his old cows run away, before I ever heard of them. I'll go over it just once more." (Tip was back by the kitchen window now, with his slate and book.) "Let's see: twenty-five cows at thirty-four dollars apiece;" and he worked away in nervous haste, until he came to "stood him in." If he only _could_ find out what that meant, he felt sure he could do it. If he had somebody to help him; but he hadn't. There would be no time after he went to school before the class was called. Just then he thought of his father; he used to be a carpenter before he was sick, and he used to make a great many figures sometimes on smooth boards. Tip remembered it was just possible that he might know something about the sum. Suppose he should ask him? He started up suddenly, and went towards the bedroom door. "Father," he said softly, "can't you tell me what 'stood him in' means?" The sick man turned himself on his pillow, and looked wonderingly at Tip. "What do you mean?" he asked at last. "Why," said Tip, in a despairing tone, "it says 'stood him in' in the arithmetic,--the sheep stood him in two dollars apiece,--and I don't see any sense to it." "Oh!" said Mr. Lewis; "I see what you mean;" then he went back to his long-ago deserted carpenter's shop. "Why, Tip, if I had ten pounds of nails, and they were worth eight cents a pound, they would stand me just so much,--that is, they would be worth that to me; and if I should sell them I'd get so much for them. Don't you see?" Light began to dawn on Tip's mind. "Then it means," he said, "that the man didn't sell his sixteen sheep; he just counted them worth two dollars apiece. Yes, I see; if that's it, I'll try it." And he rushed to his work again. And Tip will never forget the eagerness with which he presently turned to the answer in his arithmetic, and from that back to the one on the slate, nor the way in which the blood bounded through his veins when he found that they agreed perfectly. "It's exactly it," he called out to his father, in a hearty, grateful voice. "I've got it, and I've been at work on it this whole morning." Ellis Holbrook, about that time, conquered a most puzzling example in algebra; but he felt not prouder than did Tip.