“I cannot walk like him, Mother,” said Joachim.

“Why not?”

“Because he walks so very well!”

“Oh,”—­said Joachim’s Mother.

There was another pause.

“Come, Joachim,” continued the Widow, “I am very anxious to admire you as much as your Aunt does.  You are not tired; let us have some more exhibitions.  You gave us a song just now horribly out of tune, and with the screeching voice of a bagpipe.”

“I was singing like Tom Smith,” interrupted Joachim.

“Is he your best singer?” enquired the Mother.  Another laugh followed.

“Nay, Mother, no one sings so badly.”

“Indeed!  How does the Singing Master sing, Joachim?”

“Oh, Mother,” cried Joachim, “so beautifully, it would make the tears come into your eyes with pleasure, to listen to him.”

“Well, but as I cannot listen to him, let me, at all events, have the pleasure of hearing my clever son imitate him,” was the reply.

Joachim was mute.  He had a voice, though not a remarkable one, but he had shirked the labour of trying to improve it by practice.  He made one effort to sing like the Master, but overpowered by a sense of incapacity, his voice failed, and he felt disposed to cry.

“Why, Joachim, I thought you were such a clever creature you could imitate any thing,” cried the Mother.

No answer fell from the abashed boy, till a sudden thought revived him.

“But I can imitate the singing-master, Mother.”

“Let me hear you, my dear child.”

“Why it isn’t exactly what you can hear,” observed Joachim murmuringly; “but when he sings, you have no idea what horrible faces he makes.  Nay, it’s true, indeed, he turns up his eyes, shuts them, distorts his mouth, and swings about on the stool like the pendulum of a clock!”

And Joachim performed all the grimaces and contortions to perfection, till his Aunt and Cousins were convulsed with laughter.

“Well done,” cried his Mother.  “Now you are indeed like the cat in the German fable, Joachim! who voted himself like the bear, because he could lick his paws after the same fashion, though he could not imitate either his courage or his strength.  Now let me look a little further into your education.  Bring me your drawing-book.”  It came, and there was page after page of odd and ugly faces, strange noses, stranger eyes, squinting out of the book in hideous array.

“I suppose you will laugh again if I ask you if these are the beauties of your school, Joachim;—­but tell me seriously, are there no good, pleasant, or handsome faces among your schoolfellows?”

“Plenty, Mother; one or two the Master calls models, and who often sit to him to be drawn from.”

“Draw one of those faces for me, my dear; I am fond of beauty.”  And the Mother placed the book in his hands, pointing to a blank page.