You will wonder, perhaps, that Charley did not run away, as so many boys do in books, and a few out of them.  Somehow he never thought of that.  He was not a hardy, adventurous fellow at all.  His desire to go to sea was a fancy born of foolish reading, and he wanted to have his going made easy for him.

“I must set to work in another way,” he thought at last.  “Asking of ’em aint no use.  I must make ’em want to have me go.”  Then he fell to thinking how this could be done.

“Aunt Hitty wouldn’t hold out long if the others didn’t,” he thought.  “I could coax her into it as easy as fun.  She’ll do anything if I kiss and pet her a bit.  Then there’s Aunt Greg,—­she thinks so much of poetry and such stuff.  I’ll hunt up the pieces in the ‘Reader’ about ’The sea, the sea, the deep blue sea,’ and all that, and learn ’em and say ’em to her, and I’ll tell her about coral groves and palm-trees, and make her think it’s the jimmiest thing going to sail off and visit ’em.  Grandmother’s always bothering about my being sick, and afraid of this and afraid of that; so I’ll just be sick—­so sick that nothing but a viyage’ll cure me!  As for Aunt Prue, ’taint no use trying to impose on her.  I guess I’ll have to be real hateful and troublesome to Aunt Prue.  I’ll tease pussy and slop on the pantry shelves, and track up the floor every time she mops it, and leave the dipper in the sink, and all the other things she don’t like, and by and by she’ll be just glad to see the last of me!  Hi!—­that’ll fetch ’em all!” He ended his reflections with a chuckle.  Charley wasn’t really a bad boy,—­not bad through and through, that is,—­but he had a cunning, tricky side to his nature which made him like to play on the weaknesses of his grandmother and aunts.  A sharp boy may prove more than a match for four unsuspecting old women; and though in this case they were in the right and he in the wrong, none the less was he likely to succeed in his crafty plans.

He waited a few days to let opposition subside, and then began his tricks.  Charley’s first victim was Aunt Hitty.  She was a gentle, weak-minded person, easy to persuade, and when Charley put his head into her lap and called her coaxing names, and was sure she was too kind to disappoint him in the thing he was set upon, her heart softened, and she began to think that they all had been hard and unkind.  “The dear boy wants to go awful bad,” she told Aunt Greg, and to her surprise Aunt Greg did not fly out and scold as she had expected, but answered, with a sigh, “I suppose sailing on the ocean is beautiful!” Aunt Greg had never seen the ocean in her life, but she was naturally romantic; and Charley, who had been hard at work at the “Reader,” had crammed her with all sorts of poetical quotations and fancies concerning it.  Flying fish, coral islands, pole stars, dolphins, gallant mariners, wet sheets and flowing seas, figured largely in these extracts, but there was no mention whatever of storms, sharks, drowning, hard work, or anything disagreeable.  Aunt Greg could not see the charm of “wet sheets,” but all the rest sounded delightful; and gradually a picture formed itself in her mind of a sea which was always blue and always smooth, and of Charley standing on the deck of a ship repeating poetry to himself in the moonlight; and her opposition grew feebler and feebler.