It would take some weeks of very diligent work by three or four pairs of hands to accomplish what the mother deemed necessary in the way of preparing their wardrobe for the contemplated journey. Under the instruction of her mother and aunt, Mildred had already become as accomplished a needlewoman as either of them. A seamstress had been engaged to assist but could not be had for a few days; so plans and prospects could be talked over freely as the three sat and worked together, Baby Annis asleep in her cradle or playing contentedly on the carpet at her mother's feet. [Illustration] Chapter Second. "The mother, in her office, holds the key Of the soul; and she it is who stamps the coin Of character, and makes the being who would be a savage, But for her gentle cares, a Christian man." --OLD PLAY. THE striking of the town clock, the ringing of bells, the blowing of whistles and "the schoolboy's glad shout" announced the noontide hour. A sound of coming footsteps, of gay, young voices, an opening of doors, letting in fresh breezes from without, and with them two bright, blooming, merry little girls and a lad between them and Mildred in age, in whose great black eyes lurked a world of fun and mischief. "Softly, softly, children!" the mother said looking up with a smile as they came dancing and prancing in. "Rupert, are you not old enough to begin to act in a rather more gentlemanly way?" "Yes, mother, I beg your pardon. Yours too, Aunt Wealthy, I didn't know till this moment that you were here." "Mother, he's always teasing," complained the younger of the girls, "he says we'll have to live in wigwams like the Indians and perhaps grow to be as black and ugly as they are." "But they're not black, Ada," exclaimed the other, "my g'ography calls 'em red men." "Well, that's 'most worse, I'd as lief be black as red." "If you're careful to wear your sunbonnets when you go out, you won't grow to be either," remarked Mildred, while Mrs. Keith said with a look of mild reproof, "Rupert, my son, was it quite truthful to tell your sisters such things?" "I was only making fun," he answered, trying to turn it off with a laugh, but blushing as he spoke. "Innocent fun I never object to, but sport is too dearly bought at the sacrifice of truth. "My boy," she added with energy, "one should go to the stake rather than tell a falsehood; though it were no more than to say that two and two do not make four." "Mother, I believe you would!" he said, gazing with loving admiration into her earnest face. "I've never known you to swerve a hair's breadth from the truth in any way," and coming close to her side and speaking almost in a whisper, "I mean to try to be worthy of you in the future." She looked at him with glistening eyes, and dropping her work took his hands in hers for a moment.