"
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.
"Mamma!" said he.
"Well, dear?" said his mother, trembling so that she could hardly speak.
"Mamma," he repeated, in a loud, sharp tone, "G! G! G! G!" And then he
burst into a fit of crying, which she had hard work to stop.
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