“What shall I do all this long afternoon?” cried Will, yawning and stretching himself. “What—shall—I—do? A whole long afternoon, and the rain pouring and nothing to do. It will seem like a whole week till supper time. I know it will. Oh—dear—me!”

“It is too bad!” said Aunt Harriet, sympathetically. “Poor lad! What will you do, indeed? While you are waiting, suppose you just hold this yarn for me.”

Will held six skeins of yarn, one after another; and Aunt Harriet told him six stories, one after the other, each better than the last.

He was sorry when the yarn was all wound, and he began to wonder again what he should do all the long, long afternoon.

“Will,” said his mother, calling him over the balusters, “I wish you would stay with baby just a few minutes while I run down to the kitchen to see about something.”

Will ran up, and his mother ran down. She was gone an hour, but he did not think it was more than ten minutes, for he and baby were having a great time, playing that the big woolly ball was a tiger, and that they were elephants chasing it through the jungle.

Will blew a horn, because it spoke in the “Swiss Family Robinson” of the elephants’ trumpeting; and baby blew a tin whistle, which was a rattle, too; and the tiger blew nothing at all, because tigers do not trumpet.

It was a glorious game; but when Mamma came back, Will’s face fell, and he stopped trumpeting, because he knew it would tire Mamma’s head.

“Dear Mamma!” he said, “what shall I do this long, long afternoon, with the rain pouring and nothing to do?”

His mother took him by the shoulders, gave him a shake and then a kiss, and turned him round toward the window.

“Look there, goosey!” she cried, laughing. “It stopped raining half an hour ago, and now the sun is setting bright and clear. It is nearly six o’clock, and you have just precisely time enough to run and post this letter before tea-time.”