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 delight of his mother, the triumph of Willie, or the gratification of his father, who saw in this good promise of his boy's capacity; for all that I have written hitherto is only introductory to my story, and I long to begin and tell it you in a regular straightforward fashion.
Before I begin, however, I must not forget to tell you that Willie did ask his father the question with Mrs Wilson's answer to which he had not been satisfied--I mean the question whether God worked; and his father's answer, after he had sat pondering for a while in his chair, was something to this effect:-- "Yes, Willie; it seems to me that God works more than anybody--for He works all night and all day, and, if I remember rightly, Jesus tells us somewhere that He works all Sunday too.

If He were to stop working, everything would stop being.

The sun would stop shining, and the moon and the stars; the corn would stop growing; there would be no more apples or gooseberries; your eyes would stop seeing; your ears would stop hearing; your fingers couldn't move an inch; and, worst of all, your little heart would stop loving." "No, papa," cried Willie; "I shouldn't stop loving, I'm sure." "Indeed you would, Willie." "Not you and mamma." "Yes; you wouldn't love us any more than if you were dead asleep without dreaming." "That would be dreadful." "Yes it would.