"DEAR PAPA.
"I am sorry to say I have not seen you since you went to the war. Grandpa has two pigs. I want a drum so much!
"We have lots of squirrels: they chip. We have orioles: they say, 'Here, here, _here_ I be!'
"I want the drum because I am a _captain_! We are going to train with paper caps.
"I get up the cows and have a good time.
"Good-by. From your son,
"HORACE P. CLIFFORD.
"P.S. Ma bought me the soldier-clothes. I thank you."
About this time Mrs. Clifford was trying to put together a barrel of nice things to send to her husband. Grandma and aunt Madge baked a great many loaves of cake and hundreds of cookies, and put in cans of fruit and boxes of jelly wherever there was room. Aunt Louise made a nice little dressing-case of bronze kid, lined with silk, and Grace made a pretty pen-wiper and pin-ball. Horace whittled out a handsome steamboat, with _green_ pipes, and the figure-head of an old man's face carved in wood. But Horace thought the face looked like Prudy's, and named the steamboat "The Prudy." He also broke open his savings-bank, and begged his mother to lay out all the money he had in presents for the sick soldiers.
"Horace has a kind and loving heart," said Margaret to Louise. "To be sure he won't keep still long enough to let anybody kiss him, but he really loves his parents dearly."
"Well, he's a terrible try-patience," said Louise.
"Wait a while! He is wilful and naughty, but he never tells wrong stories. I think there's hope of a boy who _scorns a lie_! See if he doesn't come out right, Louise. Why, I expect to be proud of our Horace one of these days!"
CHAPTER VII.
IN THE WOODS.
"O, ma," said Horace, coming, into the house one morning glowing with excitement, "mayn't I go in the woods with Peter Grant? He knows where there's heaps of boxberries."
"And who is Peter Grant, my son?"
"He is a little boy with a bad temper," said aunt Louise, frowning severely at Horace.--If she had had her way, I don't know but every little boy in town would have been tied to a bed-post by a clothes-line.
As I have already said, aunt Louise was not remarkably fond of children, and when they were naughty it was hard for her to forgive them.
She disliked little Peter; but she never stopped to think that he had a cross and ignorant mother, who managed him so badly that he did not care about trying to be good. Mrs. Grant seldom talked with him about God and the Saviour; she never read to him from the Bible, nor told him to say his prayers.
Mrs. Clifford answered Horace that she did not wish him to go into the woods, and that was all that she thought it necessary to say.
Horace, at the time, had no idea of disobeying his mother; but not long afterwards he happened to go into the kitchen, where his grandmother was making beer.
"What do you make it of, grandma?" said he.
"Of molasses and warm water and yeast."
"But what gives the taste to it?"
"O, I put in spruce, or boxberry, or sarsaparilla."
"But see here, grandma: wouldn't you like to have me go in the woods 'someplace,' and dig roots for you?"
"Yes, indeed, my dear," said she innocently; "and if you should go, pray get some wintergreen, by all means."
Horace's heart gave a wicked throb of delight. If some one wanted him to go _after_ something, of course he _ought_ to go; for his mother had often told him he must try to be useful. Strolling into the woods with Peter Grant, just for fun, was very different from going in soberly to dig up roots for grandma.
He thought of it all the way out to the gate. To be sure he might go and ask his mother again, but "what was the use, when he knew certain sure she'd be willing? Besides, wasn't the baby crying, so he mustn't go in the room?"
These reasons sounded very well; but they could be picked in pieces, and Horace knew it. It was only when the baby was asleep that he must keep out of the chamber; and, as for being sure that his mother would let him go into the woods, the truth was, he dared not ask her, for he knew she would say, "No."
He found Peter Grant lounging near the school-house, scribbling his name on the clean white paint under one of the windows.
Peter's black eyes twinkled.
"Going, ain't you, cap'n! dog and all? But where's your basket? Wait, and I'll fetch one."
"There," said he, coming back again, "I got that out of the stable there at the tavern; Billy Green is hostler: Billy knows me."
"Well, Peter, come ahead."
"I don't believe you know your way in these ere woods," returned Peter, with an air of importance. "I'll go fust. It's a mighty long stretch, 'most up to Canada; but I could find _my_ way in the dark. I never got lost anywheres yet!"
"Poh! nor I either," Horace was about to say; but remembering his adventure in Cleveland, he drowned the words in a long whistle.
They kept on up the steep hill for some distance, and then struck off into the forest. The straight pine trees stood up solemn and stiff.
Instead of tender leaves, they bristled all over with dark green "needles." They had no blessings of birds' nests in their branches; yet they gave out a pleasant odor, which the boys said was "nice."
"But they aren't so splendid, Peter, as our trees out west--don't begin!
_They_ grow so big you can't chop 'em down. I'll leave it to Pincher!"
"Chop 'em down? I reckon it can't be done!" replied Pincher--not in words, but by a wag of his tail.
"Well, how _do_ you get 'em down then, cap'n?"
"We cut a place right 'round 'em: that's girdlin' the tree, and then, ever so long after, it dies and drops down itself."
"O, my stars!" cried Peter, "I want to know!"
"No, you DON'T want to know, Peter, for I just told you! You may say, 'I wonder,' if you like; that's what we say out west."
"Wait," said Peter. "I only said, '_I_ want to know what other trees you have;' that's what I meant, but you _shet_ me right up."
"O, there's the butternut, and tree of heaven, and papaw, and 'simmon, and a 'right smart sprinkle' of wood-trees."
"What's a 'simmon?"