"No, child; that's not an easy thing to do; but you could knit."

"Could I? What good would it do?"

"Why, you could knit your mother a pair of stockings."

"Could I though? Will you teach me, Mrs Wilson?"

Mrs Wilson very readily promised, foreseeing that so she might have a
good deal more of the little man's company, if indeed he was in earnest;
for she was very lonely, and was never so happy as when he was with
her. She said she would get him some knitting-needles--wires she called
them--that very evening; she had some wool, and if he came to-morrow,
she would soon see whether he was old enough and clever enough to learn
to knit. She advised him, however, to say nothing about it to his mother
till she had made up her mind whether or not he could learn; for if he
could, then he might surprise her by taking her something of his own
knitting--at least a pair of muffetees to keep her wrists warm in the
winter. Willie went home solemn with his secret.

The next day he began to learn, and although his fingers annoyed him a
good deal at first by refusing to do exactly as he wanted them, they
soon became more obedient; and before the new year arrived, he had
actually knitted a pair of warm white lamb's-wool stockings for his
mother. I am bound to confess that when first they were finished they
were a good deal soiled by having been on the way so long, and perhaps
partly by the little hands not always being so clean as they might
have been when he turned from play to work; but Mrs Wilson washed them
herself, and they looked, if not as white as snow, at least as white
as the whitest lamb you ever saw. I will not attempt to describe the