“He isn’t company!” cried Rosy. “Mr. Higginson isn’t; I ain’t a bit afraid of him.” “No more you should be,” exclaimed Mrs. Brimmer, setting down her pie-plates; “and then again, child, there isn’t any call to be afraid of any one, so long as you haven’t been doing anything wrong.” “But it scares me to think something don’t look nice, or I don’t know how to do things,” said Rosy. “Well, that’s very silly,” observed Mrs. Brimmer, going for her pastry-board; “do the best you can, Rosy, and then let it go.” Rosy turned her little anxious face toward her mother, and smiled. “Anyway, this company is to be nice, and the things will be nice, too, I guess, ma.” “We’ll try to make ’em so,” declared her mother, energetically stirring up her mince-meat in the stone jar. “What will Miss Clorinda say to see the goose that I’m going to roast all myself?” cried Rosy, deserting her mush-kettle, to go over with this important question to the baking-table. “Say, ma?” “I’m sure I don’t know!” cried Mrs. Brimmer, with pride. “She’ll say, ‘Was there ever such a goose!’ like as not, though, Rosy.” “Do you suppose she really will!” cried the girl in delight, the color coming into her cheeks. When she looked like this, the boys, her brothers Jack and Cornelius, always called her “Wild Rose,” and it was their secret delight to summon the lovely bloom in as many startling ways as they could. “But you’d better fly back to that mush,” said Mother Brimmer presently, “and get breakfast as you’d ought to, and not look ahead to to-morrow. That’ll take care of itself.” “So it will!” cried Rosy merrily. Jack and Cornelius, now hurrying in to breakfast, the small maid-of-all-work had to desert her delightful anticipations of to-morrow’s good times and fly to the work in hand. It was presently on the table—the steaming dish of mush, the baked potatoes, and the large pitcher of milk, and Mother Brimmer being summoned from her work, wiped her hands, took off her apron, and joined the others at their simple meal. For the good woman, although her children were “in business and doing for themselves,” as she proudly expressed it, observed the same frugality as when times were hard and the future looked dark. “We won’t give up our plain breakfasts; they’ve always done us good, and we don’t need any other food,” she would say when the boys urged her to have a “bit of meat for herself, at least.” “No, no; I don’t want it,” she said, “mother’s tough and hearty. As long as I’ve such perfect health, you needn’t worry, children.” So the money that would have gone into the butcher’s till for the beefsteak or mutton chop, went instead into the bank to Brimmer Brothers and Company’s credit.