'But I guess we'll have to spare Pauline,' said Mr Harding. 'She has been a good girl, and she deserves a holiday.' He patted Pauline's hand kindly. 'Oh, of course!' sniffed Mrs Harding in high dudgeon; 'some folks must always have what they cry for. I can be kep' awake nights with the baby, and work like a slave in the day time, but that doesn't signify as long as Pawliney gets to her grand relations.' 'Well, well, wife,' said Mr Harding soothingly, 'things won't be as bad as you think for. You can get Martha Spriggs to help with the chores, and the children will soon be older. Young folks must have a turn, you know, and I shall write to Robert to-night and tell him Pawliney will be along shortly--that is if you'd like to go, my dear?' Pauline turned on him a face so radiant that he was satisfied, and the rest of the meal was taken in silence. Mrs Harding knew when her husband made up his mind about a thing she could not change him, so she said no more, but Pauline felt she was very angry. As for herself, she seemed to walk on air. At last, after all these years, something had happened! She stepped about the dim kitchen exultantly. Could this be the same girl who had found life intolerable only two hours before? Now the Aladdin wand of kindly fortune had opened before her dazzled eyes a mine of golden possibilities. At last she would have a chance to breathe and live. She arranged the common, heavy ware on the shelves with a strange sense of freedom. She would be done with dish-washing soon. She even found it in her heart to pity her step-mother, who was giving vent to her suppressed wrath in mighty strokes of her pudding-stick through a large bowl of buckwheat batter. She was not going to Boston. When the chores were done, she caught up the fretful Polly and carried her upstairs, saying the magic name over softly to herself. She even found it easy to be patient with Lemuel as he put her through her nightly torture before he fell into the arms of Morpheus. She did not mind much if Polly was wakeful--she knew she should never close her eyes all night. The soft spring air floated in through the open window, and she heard the birds twitter and the frogs peep: she heard Abraham Lincoln, the old horse that she used to ride to water before she grew big enough to work, whinney over his hay; and Goliath, the young giant that had come to take his place in the farm work, answer him sonorously: the dog barked lazily as a nighthawk swept by, and in the distant hen-yard she heard a rooster crow. Her pity grew, until it rested like a benison upon all her humble friends, for they must remain in Sleepy Hollow, and she was going away. _Chapter II_ A TEN-DOLLAR BILL 'I suppose you'll be wanting some finery, little girl,' said Mr Harding the next morning as he pushed away his chair from the breakfast table. 'Dress is the first consideration, isn't it, with women?'