Nelly and Rob sat down on two low crickets by their mother's knee, and looked up in her face without speaking. They felt that something very serious was coming. Before Mrs. March began to speak, she kissed them both several times, then she said:-- "There is one thing I am very sure of: both my little children will be brave and good, if hard times come." "Oh, mamma! tell us quick; don't bother," interrupted impatient Rob, "let's know what it is quick, mamma. Are we going to be awful poor, like the people in story books? I don't care if we are, if that's all. Let's have it over." Mrs. March laughed again: one reason she loved Rob so much was that his temper was so much like her own. It had been very hard for her herself to learn to be patient, and to be sufficiently moderate in her speech; and even now there was nothing in the world she disliked so much as suspense of any kind. She could make up her mind to endure almost any thing, if only it were fixed and settled. So when Rob burst out with impatient speeches like this one, she knew exactly how he felt. And sometimes when Nelly took things quietly and calmly, and was so deliberate in all her movements, Mrs. March misunderstood her, and thought she did not really care about any thing half as much as Rob did. But the truth was, Nelly really cared a great deal more about almost everything, than he did. He forgot things in a day, or an hour even; sad things, pleasant things, all alike: they blew away from Rob's memory and Rob's heart like leaves in a great wind, and he never thought much more about any thing than just whether he liked it or disliked it at the moment. The phrase he used to his mother just now was very often on his lips, "Oh, don't bother!" Especially he used to say this to Nelly whenever she tried to reason with him about something which she thought not quite right or not quite safe. You would have thought to hear them talk that Nelly was at least five years older than he: she talked to him like a little mother. At this moment, when Rob was hurrying his mother so impatiently, Nelly exclaimed, "Oh, hush, Rob! do let mamma tell it as she wants to;" and Nelly drew up close to her mother's side, and laid her cheek down on her mother's hand. Nelly's heart was as full as it could be of sympathy: she knew that her mother felt very unhappy about going away, and Nelly's way of showing her sympathy was to be very loving and tender and quiet; but, strange as it may seem, this did not comfort and help Mrs. March so much as Rob's off-hand and impatient way. "Well, but she's so slow: ain't you slow, mamma? And it's horrid to wait," replied Rob. "Yes, Rob," laughed Mrs. March. "I am rather slow, and it is horrid to wait; but I won't be slow any longer: this is what papa and I were talking about the other night,--about going out to Colorado to live." "Colorado! where's that? Is it anywhere near the Himalayas?" cried Rob. "If it is, I'd like to go; oh, I'd like to go ever so much."