difference when his mother begged Mrs Wilson to give him something
sweet only now and then, for she was afraid of his going to see the old
woman merely for what she gave him, which would have been greedy. But
the fact was, he liked her stories better than her sugar-candy and
liquorice; while above all things he delighted in watching the wonderful
wheel go round and round so fast that he could not find out whether her
foot was making it spin, or it was making her foot dance up and down
in that curious way. After she had explained it to him as well as she
could, and he thought he understood it, it seemed to him only the more
wonderful and mysterious; and ever as it went whirring round, it sung a
song of its own, which was also the song of the story, whatever it was,
that the old woman was telling him, as he sat listening in her high soft
chair, covered with long-faded chintz, and cushioned like a nest. For
Mrs Wilson had had a better house to live in once, and this chair, as
well as the chest of drawers of dark mahogany, with brass handles, that
stood opposite the window, was part of the furniture she saved when she
had to sell the rest; and well it was, she used to say, for her old
rheumatic bones that she had saved the chair at least. In that chair,
then, the little boy would sit coiled up as nearly into a ball as might
be, like a young bird or a rabbit in its nest, staring at the wheel, and
listening with two ears and one heart to its song and the old woman's
tale both at once.


[Illustration: "WILLIE LIKED MRS WILSON'S STORIES BETTER THAN HER SUGAR
CANDY."]


One sultry summer afternoon, his mother not being very well and having
gone to lie down, his father being out, as he so often was, upon