ground.  Willy cried.  He ate very little breakfast.  He stood at the window in a listless attitude of discouraged misery, which she said cut her to the heart.  Once in a while he would ask for some plaything which he did not usually have.  She gave him whatever he asked for; but he could not play.  She kept up an appearance of being busy with her sewing, but she was far more unhappy than Willy.

Dinner was brought up to them.  Willy said, “Mamma, this ain’t a bit good dinner.”

She replied, “Yes, it is, darling; just as good as we ever have.  It is only because we are eating it alone.  And poor papa is sad, too, taking his all alone downstairs.”

At this Willy burst out into an hysterical fit of crying and sobbing.

“I shall never see my papa again in this world.”

Then his mother broke down, too, and cried as hard as he did; but she said, “Oh! yes, you will, dear.  I think you will say that letter before tea-time, and we will have a nice evening downstairs together.”

“I can’t say it.  I try all the time, and I can’t say it; and, if you keep me here till I die, I shan’t ever say it.”

The second night settled down dark and gloomy, and Willy cried himself to sleep.  His mother was ill from anxiety and confinement; but she never faltered.  She told me she resolved that night that, if it were necessary, she would stay in that room with Willy a month.  The next morning she said to him, more seriously than before, “Now, Willy, you are not only a foolish little boy, you are unkind; you are making everybody unhappy.  Mamma is very sorry for you, but she is also very much displeased with you.  Mamma will stay here with you till you say that letter, if it is for the rest of your life; but mamma will not talk with you, as she did yesterday.  She tried all day yesterday to help you, and you would not help yourself; to-day you must do it all alone.”

“Mamma, are you sure I shall ever say it?” asked Willy.

“Yes, dear; perfectly sure.  You will say it some day or other.”

“Do you think I shall say it to-day?”

“I can’t tell.  You are not so strong a little boy as I thought.  I believed you would say it yesterday.  I am afraid you have some hard work before you.”

Willy begged her to go down and leave him alone.  Then he begged her to shut him up in the closet, and “see if that wouldn’t make him good.”  Every few minutes he would come and stand before her, and say very earnestly, “Are you sure I shall say it?”

He looked very pale, almost as if he had had a fit of illness.  No wonder.  It was the whole battle of life fought at the age of four.

It was late in the afternoon of this the third day.  Willy had been sitting in his little chair, looking steadily at the floor, for so long a time that his mother was almost frightened.  But she hesitated to speak to him, for she felt that the crisis had come.  Suddenly he sprang up, and walked toward her with all the deliberate firmness of a man in his whole bearing.  She says there was something in his face which she has never seen since, and does not expect to see till he is thirty years old.