“But, mother, you know he always gives away the best part of his dinner,” interposed Esther.  “He supplies two or three boys with food.  There is that dirty Kinch that he is so fond of, who never takes any dinner with him, and depends entirely upon Charlie.  He must be hungry; do let him come down and get his tea, mother?”

Notwithstanding the observations of Caroline that Esther was just persuading her mother to spoil the boy, that he would be worse than ever, and many other similar predictions.  Esther and the tea combined won a signal triumph, and Charlie was called down from the room above, where he had been exchanging telegraphic communications with the before-mentioned Kinch, in hopes of receiving a commutation of sentence.

Charlie was soon seated at the table with an ample allowance of corn-bread and tea, and he looked so demure, and conducted himself in such an exemplary manner, that one would have scarcely thought him given to marbles and dirty company.  Having eaten to his satisfaction he quite ingratiated himself with Caddy by picking up all the crumbs he had spilled during tea, and throwing them upon the dust-heap.  This last act was quite a stroke of policy, as even Caddy began to regard him as capable of reformation.

The tea-things washed up and cleared away, the females busied themselves with their sewing, and Charlie immersed himself in his lessons for the morrow with a hearty goodwill and perseverance as if he had abjured marbles for ever.

The hearty supper and persevering attention to study soon began to produce their customary effect upon Charlie.  He could not get on with his lessons.  Many of the state capitals positively refused to be found, and he was beginning to entertain the sage notion that probably some of the legislatures had come to the conclusion to dispense with them altogether, or had had them placed in such obscure places that they could not be found.  The variously coloured states began to form a vast kaleidoscope, in which the lakes and rivers had been entirely swallowed up.  Ranges of mountains disappeared, and gulfs and bays and islands were entirely lost.  In fact, he was sleepy, and had already had two or three narrow escapes from butting over the candles; finally he fell from his chair, crushing Caddy’s newly-trimmed bonnet, to the intense grief and indignation of that young lady, who inflicted summary vengeance upon him before he was sufficiently awake to be aware of what had happened.

The work being finished, Mrs. Ellis and Caddy prepared to take it home to Mrs. Thomas, leaving Esther at home to receive her father on his return and give him his tea.

Mrs. Ellis and Caddy wended their way towards the fashionable part of the city, looking in at the various shop-windows as they went.  Numberless were the great bargains they saw there displayed, and divers were the discussions they held respecting them.  “Oh, isn’t that a pretty calico, mother, that with the green ground?”