Sunshine Factory | Page 3

it."
"He'll come," said the tall man, striding on very fast; "which is the way? Oh, you want the molasses;" and while they waited in the store, he picked out a dozen rosy apples and had them put up; Mollie watching with eager eyes. What if he should be going to give her one of them to pay her for showing the way. If he did, grandpa should have his dessert.
The end of this story is one that is very hard to write.
How can I tell you in a few lines about the walk home, and about how the tall gentleman carried the molasses, and said he would step in and see grandpa a minute, and how grandpa's eyes, dim and old as they were, yet knew in a minute that his own boy Dick stood before him, and how they talked and laughed, and cried, and had a wonderful dinner; every one of the twelve rosy apples bubbled into sauce; nor how they moved the next day out of that street entirely into the nicest of little houses, and how roasted potatoes and apple-sauce came to be every day matters to Mollie, and how she made the dearest little housekeeper in the world. You see it can't be done; it sounds like a fairy story, but Mollie knows that it all happened.
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[Illustration]

FISHING.
Stuart Milburn did not feel very good-natured. "The whole world has gone crazy," he muttered; "anyway this little snipe of a village has. Why can't they let a fellow alone? I don't want them to look after me, and I don't feel in need of their interference either. I never saw such a time; I can't turn in any direction but some old maid will ask me something stupid; and the girls are as bad, and the boys are worse."
Now, what do you suppose all this was about? You will be surprised when you hear, for no doubt you think from his picture that Stuart was a sensible boy.
The truth of the matter was just this: Stuart's home was in the city, but he had come to the country to spend the summer vacation at his uncle's, and have a good time. In his uncle's family were five cousins, three boys and two girls. Robert, the oldest, was five years older than Stuart, and, being a college graduate, Stuart looked up to him and respected his opinion. He, as well as the others, were Christians.
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Now, it so happened that when the family of cousins heard that Stuart was coming to spend the summer, they entered into an agreement to pray for him every night and morning, and to do every thing that they could to get him to be a Christian. A most reasonable and unselfish thing, you will say. What would Stuart have thought of them if they had possessed any other good thing in this world, and had kept all knowledge of it to themselves!
But it was this very thing that had vexed him, and sent him off alone with Tiger, that summer morning, instead of joining the cousins in their fun. And yet they had been very pleasant about it all; they had not tried to force him into doing anything that he did not want to do. I hardly know what made him so absurd.
"Stuart," his Cousin Will said, "I wish you were going to Yale with me this fall."
"I wish I were, with all my heart, old fellow," said Stuart, with the utmost heartiness. "I worked like a Jehu to get ready to enter, but I didn't accomplish it; never mind, just you look out for me next fall. I'll be there as sure as my name is Milburn."
"Stuart," his Cousin Robert said, a little later, as they were coming up the walk together, "I wish you were going this road to heaven with me," and Stuart answered nothing and looked annoyed and wished his cousin would let him alone. Now, if you see any sense to that you see more than I do.
As to the "old maids" there was only one of them in his uncle's family, and as she was his own mother's own sister, and he had often been heard to say that she was the very best old aunty that a fellow ever had, one would think he might have excused her for wanting him to go to heaven where his mother had been waiting for him for three years.
However he didn't. It was her softly spoken sentence as they rose from prayers that morning: "I prayed for you all the time, Stuart," that had sent him off in a pet with his fishing rod over his shoulder.
"You may go along," he said to Tiger; "thank fortune you can't talk; if you could no doubt you would ask me to