On the Saturday previous to my departure, which had been fixed for Monday, it rained heavily all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame of mind.  His mercury was very low indeed.

“That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as he can go,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woeful face.  “I can’t do anything with him.”

“He’ll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey.  Boys will be boys.  I would not give a snap for a lad without animal spirits.”

“But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey sententiously, “shouldn’t saw off the legs of the piano in Tobias’s best parlor.  I don’t know what Tobias will say when he finds it out.”

“What! has Andy sawed off the legs of the old spinet?” I returned, laughing.

“Worse than that.”

“Played upon it, then!”

“No, sir.  He has lied to me!”

“I can’t believe that of Andy.”

“Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severely.  “He pledged me his word of honor that he would give over his climbing.  The way that boy climbs sends a chill down my spine.  This morning, notwithstanding his solemn promise, he shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the extension, and sat astride the ridge-pole.  I saw him, and he denied it!  When a boy you have caressed and indulged and lavished pocket-money on lies to you and will climb, then there’s nothing more to be said.  He’s a lost child.”

“You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey.  Training and education are bound to tell in the end, and he has been well brought up.”

“But I didn’t bring him up on a lightning-rod, did I?  If he is ever going to know how to behave, he ought to know now.  To-morrow he will be eleven years old.”

The reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly been brought up by the lightning.  He was eleven years old in two weeks!

I essayed, with that perspicacious wisdom which seems to be the peculiar property of bachelors and elderly maiden ladies, to tranquillize Mr. Jaffrey’s mind, and to give him some practical hints on the management of youth.

“Spank him,” I suggested at last.

“I will!” said the old gentleman.

“And you’d better do it at once!” I added, as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy would be a hundred and forty-three years old!—­an age at which parental discipline would have to be relaxed.

The next morning, Sunday, the rain came down as if determined to drive the quicksilver entirely out of my poor friend.  Mr. Jaffrey sat bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished.  As the day advanced, the wind veered round to the northeast, and settled itself down to work.  It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to think, what Mr. Jaffrey’s condition would be if the weather did not mend its manners by