"I am going to boarding-school," announced Ruby, triumphantly.

Ruthy was just as surprised as Ruby had expected her to be. She sat straight up in the hay, and let her book fall, while she looked at Ruby with wide-open eyes.

"What!" she exclaimed, as if she could not believe her ears. "Did you really say you were going to boarding-school, Ruby Harper?"

"Yes, I really am," Ruby responded, "but there 's more than that to tell you. What do you suppose I am going to have to take with me?"

"I am sure I don't know," Ruthy answered.

"I am going to have a trunk of my very own," said Ruby, proudly. "It will be like Maude Birkenbaum's, papa said it would be. It is to be black, and have a beautiful row of gold nails all around the top, and then at one end there will be 'M. D. B.' in letters made of the nails all driven in rows. Won't that be beautiful?"

"Yes, indeed," answered Ruthy. "But what will 'M. D. B.' stand for, Ruby?"

"Why, for my initials of course," Ruby answered. "Oh, no, I made a mistake. It won't be 'M. D. B.,' but 'R. T. H.,' to stand for Ruby Todd Harper. I forgot that my initials and Maude's were n't the same.

But just think of it, Ruthy. To have a trunk of one's own and a key to it! I think that will be too lovely for anything."

"Are you glad you are going to boarding-school?" asked Ruthy, looking at her rather soberly.

"Why, yes, of course I am," said Ruby, trying to forget that it meant going away from home, too.

"How long will you stay, do you suppose?" asked Ruthy.

"Oh, I don't exactly know. Till mamma gets well again, papa said,"

Ruby replied. "I spose maybe about a year."

Ruby had rather vague ideas about the length of a year. She always counted a year from one Christmas to the next, or from one Fourth of July to the next, whichever happened to be nearest the time from which she was calculating; and though it seemed a long time when she looked back from one holiday to the last, yet she did not have a very good idea how much time it took for twelve months to pa.s.s away. Ruby knew her tables, and she could have told you in one minute, that it took three hundred and sixty-five days to make a year, but she did not know how long it took that procession of days to pa.s.s along and let the new year come in.

"Oh, dear," and Ruthy buried her face in the hay, and began to cry.

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Ruby, in surprise.

"I shall miss you so dreadfully," sobbed Ruthy. "I shall not have any one to play with, that is, any one like you, and I shall miss you all the time."

"But I am going to ask your mamma to let you go with me," Ruby said comfortingly. "I forgot to tell you, but I truly will. Do you suppose I would go away off to boarding-school without you, Ruthy Warren? You might know I would n't. Of course not. Come and let's go in now and ask your mother if you can't go with me."

But Ruthy cried harder than ever.

"But I don't want to go to boarding-school," she sobbed. "I want to stay with my mamma. I should just die if I went way off away from her.

I don't want you to go either, Ruby. I don't see what you think it is nice to go to boarding-school for, anyway."

"Now, Ruthy, I thought you would go with me, even if you didn't think it would be very nice at first," Ruby said, in rather reproving tones.

"Of course you think it would n't be nice, but it would be after you got used to it, and you would have a trunk, too, maybe. Wouldn't that be nice?"

But the trunk was no comfort to Ruthy. She could not understand how Ruby could bear to think of leaving her mother. She was quite sure she would never be willing to do it, and not Ruby's most eloquent representations to her of how delightful going away with a trunk would be, could induce her to want to accompany her.

"Oh, I wish you were not going, either," was all that Ruby could coax from her, after she had talked until she was tired.

CHAPTER VII.

MORE PREPARATIONS.

Thee was nothing that vain little Ruby enjoyed more than a sense of importance, and so she was quite happy for the next few days. All her little friends looked upon her with wonder when they heard that she was going away to boarding-school, and Ruby's announcement to them that she was going to take a trunk added to the importance of the occasion quite as much as she had hoped it would.

There was only a week in which to make all preparations for her going, so you can imagine that they were very busy days. Miss Abigail Hart, the dressmaker who made every one's clothes, when they were not made by people themselves, came to the house every day, and sewed all day long, and Aunt Emma helped her most of the time. If it had not been for the thoughts of the trunk, Ruby would have found some of these days very tiresome. She had to be always ready in case Miss Hart should want to try on any of her dresses, so she could not go very far away from the house, and she found Miss Hart's dressmaking very different from her mother's dressmaking.

Miss Abigail Hart was tall and thin, and as Ruby and many other little girls said, had quite forgotten all about the time when she was a little girl; so when she went to houses to sew, the children usually tried to keep out of her way as much as possible. Her hands were very cold, whether it was summer or winter, and she never liked it if any one whom she was fitting jumped about when her cold fingers touched one's neck. She wore long scissors, tied by a ribbon to her waist, and these scissors were always cold; and it was not at all a pleasant operation to have the waist of a dress fitted, and have Miss Abigail's cold fingers, and her still colder scissors creeping about one's neck.

"If you don't keep still it will not be my fault if you get a cut,"

Miss Abigail would say, and I am not sure but that some of the little girls were afraid that their very heads might be snipped off by a slip of those shining blades, if they wriggled about when the necks of their dresses were being trimmed down.

Miss Abigail was very slow, so it took a long time to go through this operation, and the worst part of it was that one fitting never was sufficient. At least twice, and sometimes three times she would repeat it, and there were plenty of Ruby's friends who had said that not for all the new dresses in the world would they want to have Miss Abigail fit them. They would rather have but one dress and have that dress made by their mothers, if they had to choose between that and those cold fingers and sharp scissors.

It was very pleasant to go to the store with Aunt Emma, and help choose the pretty calicoes and delaines which were to be made into dresses and help fill the little trunk. Ruby never felt more important than when she was perched upon the high stool before the counter and had four new dresses at once. She fancied that the store-keeper was more respectful in his tone than he usually was when he addressed little girls, and that he was much impressed by the fact that Aunt Emma let her select the pattern herself instead of choosing for her.

The calicoes were very pretty. One was covered with little rosebuds upon a cream-tinted ground, and the other had little dark-blue moons upon a light-blue ground. The delaines were brown and blue; and then besides these dresses, Ruby's best cashmere was to be let down, and have the sleeves lengthened, so that it would still be nice for a best dress.

Ruby had never had so many new dresses all at once in her life before, and she felt very important when her papa brought them home in the buggy, and they were all spread out before Miss Abigail.

Miss Abigail looked at them very wisely, with her head a little upon one side. She rubbed them between her fingers, wondered whether they would wash well, and finally looked at Ruby, and said,--

"I trust you are a very thankful little girl for all the mercies you have. So you know that there are some poor little children who have but rags to wear?"

"Yes 'm," said Ruby, meekly.

"Then don't you think you ought to appreciate all the blessings that have been bestowed upon you?"

"Yes 'm," Ruby replied again.

"Then you must try to be an obedient, gentle child, and do as you are bid in everything."

"Yes 'm," said Ruby, wishing in the bottom of her heart that the dresses were all made.

She had never had very much to do with Miss Abigail herself, although she had often seen her, and two or three times she had spent a day at the house, helping Mrs. Harper make one of her own dresses. Upon those occasions, however, Ruby had spent the day with Ruthy, and so she had only been with Miss Abigail a little while in the morning, and had not had much to say to her.

"If Miss Abigail was my mamma, I would not stay in the same house with her," Ruby said to herself. "I guess that is why she has n't any little girls,--because she don't know how to make them happy. I don't want to be told all the time about being good, I guess."

But Ruby had to listen to a great many lectures, whether she liked them or not, in the next few days. Miss Abigail came and stayed with them for all the rest of the week, and as she believed in little girls being made useful, Ruby had to spend a good deal of time in picking out bastings, and doing other little things for Miss Abigail.

"Oh, dear, I have n't done one single thing since I can remember," Ruby said, impatiently, to Ruthy one day when her little friend came over to see her; "I have n't done one single thing but pick out bastings and have Miss Abigail telling me how good I ought to be 'cause I have so many new dresses. I do wish she was all done and had gone away."

"But then you will go away, too, you know," Ruthy suggested.

"I wish I would n't; I wish I was going to stay here for a week after she went," Ruby answered. "I think Aunt Emma might stop her, I do so."

"How do you mean?" asked Ruthy.