The more I see of this world the hollower I find everybody. I don't mean that people haven't got their insides in them, but they are so dreadfully ungrateful. No matter how kind and thoughtful any one may be, they never give him any credit for it. They will pretend to love you and call you "dear Jimmy what a fine manly boy come here and kiss me" and then half an hour afterward they'll say "where's that little wretch let me just get hold of him O! I'll let him know." Deceit and ingratitude are the monster vices of the age and they are rolling over our beloved land like the flood. (I got part of that elegant language from the temperance lecturer last week, but I improved it a good deal.)

There is Aunt Sarah. The uncle that belonged to her died two years ago and she's awfully rich. She comes to see us sometimes with Tommy—that's her boy, a little fellow ten years old—and you ought to see how mother and Sue wait on her and how pleasant father is when she's in the room. Now she always said that she loved me like her own son. She'd say to father "How I envy you that noble boy what a comfort he must be to you," and father would say "Yes he has some charming qualities" and look as if he hadn't laid onto me with his cane that very morning and told me that my conduct was such. You'll hardly believe that just because I did the very best I could and saved her precious Tommy from an apple grave, Aunt Sarah says I'm a young Cain and knows I'll come to the gallows.

She came to see us last Friday, and on Saturday I was going bee-hunting. I read all about it in a book. You take an axe and go out-doors and follow a bee, and after a while the bee takes you to a hollow tree full of honey and you cut the tree down and carry the honey home in thirty pails and sell it for ever so much. I and Sam McGinnis were going and Aunt Sarah says "O take Tommy with you the dear child would enjoy it so much." Of course no fellow that's twelve years old wants a little chap like that tagging after him but mother spoke up and said that I'd be delighted to take Tommy and so I couldn't help myself.

We stopped in the wood-shed and borrowed father's axe and then we found a bee. The bee wouldn't fly on before us in a straight line but kept lighting on everything, and once he lit on Sam's hand and stung him good. However we chased the bee lively and by-and-by he started for his tree and we ran after him. We had just got to the old dead apple-tree in the pasture when we lost the bee and we all agreed that his nest must be in the tree. It's an awfully big old tree, and it's all rotted away on one side so that it stands as if it was ready to fall over any minute.

Nothing would satisfy Tommy but to climb that tree. We told him he'd better let a bigger fellow do it but he wouldn't listen to reason. So we gave him a boost and he climbed up to where the tree forked and then he stood up and began to say something when he disappeared. We thought he had fallen out of the tree and we ran round to the other side to pick him up but he wasn't there. Sam said it was witches but I knew he must be somewhere so I climbed up the tree and looked.

He had slipped down into the hollow of the tree and was wedged in tight. I could just reach his hair but it was so short that I couldn't get a good hold so as to pull him out. Wasn't he scared though! He howled and said "O take me out I shall die," and Sam wanted to run for the doctor.

I told Tommy to be patient and I'd get him out. So I slid down the tree and told Sam that the only thing to do was to cut the tree down and then open it and take Tommy out. It was such a rotten tree I knew it would come down easy. So we took turns chopping, and the fellow who wasn't chopping kept encouraging Tommy by telling him that the tree was 'most ready to fall. After working an hour the tree began to stagger and presently down she came with an awful crash and burst into a million pieces.

Sam and I said Hurray! and then we poked round in the dust till we found Tommy. He was all over red dust and was almost choked, but he was awfully mad. Just because some of his ribs were broke—so the doctor said—he forgot all Sam and I had done for him. I shouldn't have minded that much, because you don't expect much from little boys, but I did think his mother would have been grateful when we brought him home and told her what we had done. Then I found what all her professions were worth. She called father and told him that I and the other miscurrent had murdered her boy. Sam was so frightened at the awful name she called him that he ran home, and father told me I could come right up stairs with him.

They couldn't have treated me worse if I'd let Tommy stay in the tree and starve to death. I almost wish I had done it. It does seem as if the more good a boy does the more the grown folks pitch into him. The moment Sue is married to Mr. Travers I mean to go and live with him. He never scolds, and always says that Susan's brother is as dear to him as his own, though he hasn't got any.