“WHAT _shall_ I do all this long afternoon?” cried Will, yawning and
stretching himself. “What—shall—I—do? A whole long afternoon, and the
rain pouring and nothing to do. It will seem like a whole week till
supper time. I know it will. Oh—_dear_—me!”
“It _is_ too bad!” said Aunt Harriet, sympathetically. “Poor lad! What
will you do, indeed? While you are waiting, suppose you just hold this
yarn for me.”
Will held six skeins of yarn, one after another; and Aunt Harriet told
him six stories, one after the other, each better than the last.
He was sorry when the yarn was all wound, and he began to wonder again
what he should do all the long, long afternoon.
“Will,” said his mother, calling him over the balusters, “I wish you
would stay with baby just a few minutes while I run down to the kitchen
to see about something.”
Will ran up, and his mother ran down. She was gone an hour, but he did
not think it was more than ten minutes, for he and baby were having a
great time, playing that the big woolly ball was a tiger, and that they
were elephants chasing it through the jungle.
Will blew a horn, because it spoke in the “Swiss Family Robinson” of
the elephants’ trumpeting; and baby blew a tin whistle, which was a
rattle, too; and the tiger blew nothing at all, because tigers do not
trumpet.
It was a glorious game; but when Mamma came back, Will’s face fell, and
he stopped trumpeting, because he knew it would tire Mamma’s head.
“Dear Mamma!” he said, “what _shall_ I do this long, long afternoon,
with the rain pouring and nothing to do?”
His mother took him by the shoulders, gave him a shake and then a kiss,
and turned him round toward the window.
“Look there, goosey!” she cried, laughing. “It stopped raining half an
hour ago, and now the sun is setting bright and clear. It is nearly six
o’clock, and you have just precisely time enough to run and post this
letter before tea-time.”