At breakfast the next morning, Mr. March told Rob and Nelly that it was decided that they would move out to Colorado. The two children received the news very differently. Nelly dropped her knife and fork, and looked steadily in her father's face for a full minute: her cheeks grew red, and she drew in a long breath, and said, "Oh! oh!" That was all she said; but her face was radiant with happiness. Rob bounded out of his chair, flew to his mother and gave her a kiss, then to his father and gave him a great hug, and then he gave a regular Indian war-whoop, as he ran back to his seat. "Rob! Rob! you must not be so boisterous," exclaimed his mother; but she was laughing as hard as she could laugh, and Rob knew she was not really displeased with him. "Oh Nell, Nell!" cried Rob, "isn't it splendid? why don't you say any thing?" "I can't," replied Nelly. But her cheeks were growing redder and redder every minute, and her father saw that tears were coming in her eyes. "Why, Nell," he said, "you are not sorry, are you? I thought you wanted to go." "Oh, so I do, papa," exclaimed Nelly; "I want to go so much that I can't believe it." Mr. March smiled. He understood Nelly better than her mother did. CHAPTER III OFF FOR COLORADO It was finally decided that it would be best not to set out for Colorado until the middle of March. There were many things to be arranged and provided for, and Mr. March did not wish to leave the people of his parish too suddenly. Afterward he wished that he had gone away immediately, as soon as his decision was made; for the ten weeks that he waited were merely ten long weeks of good-bye. Everybody loved him, and was sorry he was going; and there was not a day that somebody did not come in to hear the whole story over again, why he was going, when he was going, where he was going, and all about it. At last Mrs. March grew so tired of talking it all over and over, that she said to people: "I really can't talk any more about it. We are not going till the fifteenth of March, but I wish it were to-morrow." After the first two or three weeks, Rob and Nelly lost much of their interest in talking it over; two months ahead seemed to them just as far off as two years; and they did not more than half believe they would ever really go. But when the packing began, all their old interest and enthusiasm returned, and they could not keep quiet a moment. Nelly's great anxiety was to decide whether she would better carry Mrs. Napoleon in her arms all the way or let her go in a trunk. She said to her mother that she really thought Mrs. Napoleon would go safer in her arms than anywhere else. "You see, mamma, I should never lay her down a single minute, and how could any thing happen to her then? But in the trunk she would be shaken and jolted all the time." The truth was, Nelly was very proud of Mrs. Napoleon, and she secretly had thought to herself, "I expect there'll be a great many little girls in the