“I think ‘Glory, glory, hallelujah!’ is nicer,” said Budge, “an’ I know that’s a Sunday song, ’cause I’ve heard it in church.”

“Aw wight,” said Toddie; and he immediately started the old air himself, with the words, “There liezh the whisky-bottle, empty on the sheff,” but was suddenly brought to order by a shake from his aunt, while his uncle danced about the front parlor in an ecstasy not directly traceable to toothache.

“That’s not a Sunday song either, Toddie,” said Mrs. Burton.  “The words are real rowdyish.  Where did you learn them?”

“Round the corner from our housh,” said Toddie, “an’ you can shing your ole shongs yourseff, if you don’t like mine.”

Mrs. Burton went to the piano, rambled among chords for a few seconds, and finally recalled a Sunday-school air in which Toddie joined as angelically as if his own musical taste had never been impugned.

“Now I guess we’d better take up the collection before any little boys lose their pennies,” said Budge, hurrying to the dining-room, and returning with a strawberry-box which seemed to have been specially provided for the occasion; this he passed gravely before Toddie, and Toddie held his hand over it as carefully as if he were depositing hundreds, and then Toddie took the box and passed it before Budge, who made the same dumb show, after which Budge retook the box, shook it, listened, and remarked, “It don’t rattle—­I guess it’s all paper-money, to-day,” placed it upon the mantel, reseated himself, and remarked: 

“Now bring on your lesson.”

Mrs. Burton opened her Bible with a sense of utter helplessness.  With the natural instinct of a person given to thoroughness, she opened at the beginning of the book, but she speedily closed it again—­the first chapter of Genesis had suggested many a puzzling question even to her orthodox mind.  Turning the leaves rapidly, passing, for conscience sake, the record of many a battle, the details of which would have delighted the boys, and hurrying by the prophecies as records not for the minds of children, she at last reached the New Testament, and the ever-new story of the only boy who ever was all that his parents and relatives could wish him to be.

“The lesson will be about Jesus,” said Mrs. Burton.”

“Little-boy Jesus or big-man Jesus?” asked Toddie.

“A—­a—­both,” replied the teacher, in some confusion.

“Aw wight,” said Toddie.  “G’won.”

“There was once a time when all the world was in trouble, without knowing exactly why,” said Mrs. Burton; “but the Lord understood it, for He understands everything.”

“Does He knows how it feels to be a little boy?” asked Toddie, “an’ be sent to bed when He don’t want to go?”

“And He determined to comfort the world, as He always does when the world finds out it can’t comfort itself,” continued Mrs. Burton, entirely ignoring her nephew’s questions.