She had devoted herself to Moppet with politic punctiliousness.  Would he lie at his lazy length, with his feet on her clean petticoat, while she bent and puzzled over his knotted shoestrings?  Very well.  Did he signify a desire to pull her hair down and tickle her till she gasped?  She was at his service.  Should he insist upon being lulled to slumber by the recounted adventures of Old Mother Hubbard, Red Riding-Hood, and Tommy Tucker?  Not those exactly, it being thought proper to keep him in a theologic mood of mind till after sundown, but he should have David and Goliath and Moses in the bulrushes with pleasure; then Moses and Goliath and David again; after that, David and Goliath and Moses, by way of variety.  She conducted every Scriptural dog and horse of her acquaintance entirely round the globe in a series of somewhat apocryphal adventures.  She ransacked her memory for biblical boys, but these met with small favor.  “Pooh! they weren’t any good!  They couldn’t play stick-knife and pitch-in.  Besides, they all died.  Besides, they weren’t any great shakes.  Jack the Giant-Killer was worth a dozen of ’em, sir!  Now tell it all over again, or else I won’t say my prayers till next winter!”

After some delicate plotting, Sharley manoeuvred him through “Now I lay me,” and tucked him up, and undertook a little Sunday-night catechizing, conscientiously enough.

“Has Moppet been a good boy to-day?”

“Well, that’s a pretty question!  Course I have!”

“But have you had any good thoughts, dear, you know?”

“O yes, lots of ’em! been thinking about Blessingham.”

“Who?  O, Absalom!”

“O yes, I’ve been thinking about Blessingham, you know; how he must have looked dreadful funny hanging up there onto his hair, with all the darts ‘n things stickin’ into him! Wouldn’t you like to seen him!  No, you needn’t go off, ’cause I ain’t begun to be asleep yet.”

Time and twilight were creeping on together.  Sharley was sure that she had heard the gate shut, and that some one sat talking with her mother upon the front doorsteps.

“O Moppet! Couldn’t you go to sleep without me this one night,—­not this one night?” and the hot, impatient tears came in the dark.

“O no,” said immovable Moppet, “of course I can’t; and I ’spect I’m going to lie awake all night too.  You’d ought to be glad to stay with your little brothers.  The girl in my library-book, she was glad, anyhow.”

Sharley threw herself back in the rocking-chair and let her eyes brim over.  She could hear the voices on the doorsteps plainly; her mother’s wiry tones and the visitor’s; it was a man’s voice, low and less frequent.  Why did not her mother call her?  Had not he asked to see her?  Had he not?  Would nobody ever come up to take her place?  Would Moppet never go to sleep?  There he was peering at her over the top of the sheet, with two great, mischievous, wide-awake eyes.  And time and twilight were wearing on.