"I will be careful," the child said confidently, "and you know that uncle said that when spring comes he will teach me to swim; and I shall like that, and if I tumble overboard it won't matter. He says that when I get a few years older I shall go with him regularly, and learn to steer and to manage the sails. I shall like that; but I should like to go back sometimes to see Hilda and Netta and my grandpapa."
"Well, well, my dear, we will see about it; they can't take you at present. I think that they have gone away traveling, and may not be back for a long time. And mind, you know you are not to talk about them. Just when you are here with me I don't care; but you know uncle does not like it, and if anyone asks, you must say just what he told you, that your father and mother are dead, and that Uncle Bill has took you."
"I shan't forget," the boy said. "I never do talk about it before him; it makes him angry. I don't know why, but it does."
"Oh, yes, he is very kind, and he often brings me things when he comes back; he brought me my dear little kitten. Pussy, where have you hidden yourself? Puss! puss!" And in answer a little ball of white fur bounded out from behind a chair, and the child was soon engaged in a game of romps with it.
"It is a shame!" the woman said, as she watched them; "I don't mind the other things, but I never liked this. I wonder who the poor little chap is. By the way he talked when he first came, about his home and his nurse and horses and carriages, his friends must be rich people. Bill has never understood why they wanted to get rid of him; but I suppose that he was in somebody's way, and, as he never speaks of his father and mother, but only of those two girls and his grandfather, who seems to have been an invalid, I expect that he must have lost his father and mother before he can remember. Well, he will be right enough here; I should miss him dreadful if he were to go away; he seems to have taken the place of my little Billy. And Bill takes to him, too, wonderfully. He said the other day that when the boy grew up he would buy a barge, a new one of the best kind, and that some day it should be the boy's own. So he won't do so bad, after all."