"What is it? don't you know? How strange--no, it is not, neither; Mr. Fairchild said he should not tell you till it was settled; and so there can be no harm in telling it. And are you not delighted?--you don't look delighted. Your papa said that there could be nothing which would please you so much." "But what is it?" asked the little girls; "how can we be delighted, when we do not know what it is?" "Have not I told you?" asked Bessy; "I thought I told you at first. Why, we are to live in this place, and take care of it, and see that everything is kept in order; every tree, and every bench, and everything you love. How you stare!" added Bessy; "how round your eyes are! I don't mean this hut; did you think I meant that my aunt and I were to live in it, and take care of the benches?" "The house, the house?" answered Lucy, with a cry of joy; "are you and Mrs. Goodriche to have the house and the garden; and to take care of the poor people, and the school, and the hut, and the arbour, and the benches, and our little room, and the parlour, and the roses? Oh, Bessy, Bessy, dear Bessy, now am I glad indeed! and we will come to you here, and you shall come to us there. Oh, Emily, Emily, I am so happy!" The gentle eyes of Emily sparkled as brightly as Lucy's did, when she heard this news, though she said little; but she whispered to her sister, the next minute: "Now, Lucy, we should not have cried so much, it was not right." Lucy answered aloud: "No, Emily, we should not; but I hope that we shall cry no more. If the whole world had been picked, we could not have found any people we like so well to live here as Mrs. Goodriche and Bessy." "Aunt is at the house, she is come to spend the day here; and Mr. Fairchild sent me here to look for you; and we shall come in when you go out; and things are to be left as they are now, only a few to be moved. Aunt will sell her rubbish furniture, and we are to be so tidy, and I am to have your little room and bed." "And you will feed our poor robin," said Emily; "he has come every winter for a great many years, and he knows that window; but you must shut it after you have put out the crumbs, for fear of the cat. He knows us, and he will soon know you." As the three girls walked back to the house, they were quite busy in telling and hearing what things were to be attended to. Lucy and Emily felt like people who have had a tight cord bound over their hearts, and that cord had been suddenly cut, and they were loose. The three weeks which followed that day were a time of great bustle. On one evening all the children of the school came and had tea in the field behind the barn; and Mrs. Goodriche and Bessy came, that they might get acquainted with them.