Saints or philanthropists--or a little of both, which these girls were--the five young creatures worked with a will for the object in view, and the plan that they had hit upon that morning. Hester even cut short her visit to go back to New York to work for it at that end, and wrote what she described as "a chortle and not a letter," to tell the Fayre girls that she had sold a hundred and eight tickets in four days, tickets that brought two dollars each--"So there's another cripple for us already!" wrote Hester at the end of her letter; wrote in such a hasty, tremulous way that a big blot, representing her joyous excitement, crowned the H of her signature, like a black king in checkers. Rob's audience for her story-telling was secured without any difficulty, for most of the children who had heard her first series wanted to hear these new tales, and their little brothers and sisters had grown up in the meantime to a size that added them to her hearers. She sold forty-five course tickets, at five dollars apiece, and was to begin the story-telling after New Year's. So that while the preparations for the concert and dance were going on, Rob's mind was additionally burdened by the preparations for the storytelling. Her first set of twenty stories was to be from Grecian history and Grecian mythology; she tried to concoct them in her mind while she made ready the room in which they were to be told. When she had first told stories to the children of Fayre, Mrs. Silsby had lent her big parlour for the enterprise, but now that the master of the little grey house had gone away from it forever it had a room to offer its bravest daughter, a room upon which she had a special claim. On what Mrs. Grey called "the morning side of the house," opposite the dining-room, was the quaint old room, originally intended for the kitchen of the little grey house in the days when a kitchen was also the dining and living-room. It was a large room, consequently; the only one on that side of the house, and it had been Sylvester Grey's special sanctum. In it he had laboured long on the invention which, with the house, had been his sole but sufficient legacy to his family, the invention upon which Roberta, his "son Rob" had helped him for many long hours between her thirteenth and her seventeenth year. The dear old room, with its high wainscotting, narrow cupboards, and immense fireplace, had been left as its master had quitted it, except that the models of the machine and his books had been set in order and no longer lay piled over the rush-bottomed chairs as they had been when they were daily used by the thin, nervous hands which for a year and a half had been folded in rest.