At length the time came when Alfred’s pleasant visit must end. When he was going away, Walter gave Flora a very beautiful box, as a keepsake. The box was filled with sugar-plums.

He also gave one to Alfred, on which was a picture of a boy flying a kite.

When they were in the steam-boat, Alfred brought the box to his mother, and said,

“Mamma, how many of these sugar-plums may I eat to-day?”

His mother said,

“You had better give me the box to keep for you, my dear; and when you say your lessons well, I will give you a few sugar-plums at a time, as a reward.”

Alfred loved sugar-plums very much; and he said he would rather keep the box himself, and eat them just when he liked.

His mother told him that if he did he would eat them all up, as the boy in the story-book eat his cake, and very likely get as sick as he; therefore he had better give them to her to deal out to him. So Alfred consented that his mamma should do this.

There were some very hot days after Alfred’s return to Norwood. On one of these he felt very lazy, and said,

“O, mamma, my lesson is so hard that I cannot get it to-day!”

Then, instead of studying it, he would play with his shoe-string, or pocket-handkerchief.

His mamma said, many times,

“Alfred, it is getting quite late. Are you not ready to say your lesson yet?”

But Alfred did not get ready until twelve o’clock; and even then did not know his first lesson quite well; and the second one had to be put off until the afternoon. In the afternoon it was hotter than it had been in the morning. Alfred held his book in his hand, and did everything but study. He would lie down upon the floor, and look out of the window, although nothing was to be seen there but the still trees, and the drooping flowers, and the parched grass, and the hot, blinding sun, which seemed to have frightened the katydids, and the bees, and the birds, into entire stillness.

At night, when he went to bed, he called to his mamma, who was in the next room,

“O, my sugar-plums, mamma! I have not had my sugar-plums!”

“No, I know you have not, my dear. But why should you have them?”

“O, because I love them! And you know, mamma, I was to have a few every day.”

“Yes, if you deserved them. You know they were to be a kind of reward; but you certainly cannot, feel that you ought to have any to-night.”

Alfred confessed that he had not deserved them, and said he would try to do better the next day; and so, after saying the little verse which he used to repeat after he had said his prayers, he went to sleep.

This is the verse which Alfred said:—

After this Alfred got his lessons well, even without sugar-plums. He began to think, too, that he was too large to eat them, and gave them all away; although he still kept the box with the picture of the boy and the kite on it. But it became quite a saying among the children, when any one wanted something that they had not earned, “O, you must not have the sugar-plums, when you have not got your lesson.”