“And you couldn’t do your lessons and be the fine big boy that I am proud of,” said Mrs. Church.  “Now, to tell the truth, I can’t bear that sister of yours—­Susy, you call her—­but I have a liking for you, Tom Hopkins.  What is it you want me to do?”

“If you will let me come here to-morrow, I’ll push you all the way to Merrifield in time for our dinner.  Wouldn’t you like that?  And I’d bring you back again in the evening.  There’s your own old bath-chair that Uncle Church used to be moved about in before he died.”

“To be sure, there is,” said Mrs. Church, her eyes brightening.  “But the lining has got moth-eaten.”

“Who minds that?” said Tom.  “I’ll go and clean it after you have given me that bit of cake you promised me.”

Everything ended quite satisfactorily as far as Tom was concerned, for Mrs. Church forgot her anger in the interest that the boy’s visit gave her.  She consulted him about her fowls, and gave him a new-laid egg to slip into his pocket for his own supper.  Later on she allowed him to munch some very poor and very stale plumcake.  Finally she gave him his heart’s delight, for he was allowed to peer into the old microscope and revel in the sight of the beetle’s wings with thin, sweeping plumes, as he afterwards described them.

It was rather late when Tom returned home.  He burst into the parlor where his mother and Susy were sitting.

“Mother,” he said, “I have done everything splendidly; and she’s coming to dine with us to-morrow.”

“She’s what?” said Mrs. Hopkins.

“Aunt Church is coming to dine with us.  She was mad about the money, and nobody could have been nastier than she might have turned out but for me.  But it’s all right now.  We must have a nice dinner for her.  She is very fond of good things, and as she never gives them to herself, she will enjoy ours all the more.”

“She’ll think that I am rich, when I am as poor as a church mouse,” said Mrs. Hopkins.  “But I suppose you have done everything for the best, Tom, and I must go around to the butcher’s for a little addition to the dinner.”

Mrs. Hopkins left the house, and Tom sank into a chair by his sister.

“It’s golloptious for me,” he said.  “She’s taking no end of a fancy to me.  See this egg?  She gave it to me for my supper.  Mother shall have it.  Mother is looking very white about the gills; a new-laid egg that she hasn’t to pay for will nourish her up like anything.”

“So it will,” said Susy.  “We’ll boil it and say nothing about it, and just pop it on her plate when she’s having her supper.  All the same, Tom, I wish you hadn’t asked old Aunt Church here.  She is such a queer old body; and the neighbors sometimes drop in on Sundays.  And I have asked Miss Kathleen O’Hara to come in to-morrow, and she has promised to.”

“What?” said Tom.  “That grand beauty of a young lady, the pride of the school?  Why, everybody is talking about her.  At the boys’ school they’ve caught sight of her, and there isn’t a boy that hasn’t fallen in love with her.  They all slink behind the wall, and bob up as she comes by.  You don’t mean that she’s coming here?”