the window, a little table before her, on which were books and paper and pencils.

The little table was gone from the window now, the lessons with Laura were over, to-morrow night Sarah would sleep away from home for the first time in her life. They had expected that the trolley company, which had given them a good price for the right of way through the farm, would have finished its line, and that Sarah would have been able to go back and forth to school each week. But the tracks had just begun to creep out from the county-seat.

The twins had run upstairs; their deep ohs! and achs! could be heard in the kitchen below. They shrieked for Sarah, who was already on the steps.

When she looked round the familiar room, she clasped her hands and then stood perfectly still. Beside her bed was an open trunk, and spread out on the bed itself and on the twins' trundle-bed was her outfit for school. There were two school dresses, and a better dress and a best dress,—the last of red cashmere, with bands of silk. There were new shoes and a new coat and two hats and gloves and an umbrella and handkerchiefs and underwear, all marked with her name, and a gymnasium suit, and a scarlet kimono and a comfort and pencils and tablets and—Sarah began suddenly to tremble—a little silver watch and chain and a fountain-pen.

"The little watch was my first one, Sarah," explained her sister-in-law. "It keeps good time. And the fountain-pen is from William, and the umbrella—"

"And the umberella"—the twins and Albert had seized upon it simultaneously—"the umberella is from us. William, he sold our Spotty Calf for us, and this is some of the money, and you can make it up and put it down, and it has a cover like a snake, and—Look at it, once!"

Sarah took the umbrella in her hand. Her school dresses had been tried on by Laura, who had made them; she had known all about those. And William and Laura had made a trip to town and had been very short and mysterious about the bundles they brought home. She had supposed they had brought a few things for her,—a new pair of shoes, perhaps, or a new shawl. But these things! Once, during her mother's lifetime, she had had a red woolen dress; she still cherished a patch which remained after it had been made over for one of the twins. Except for that, her dresses had always been of gingham or calico. And two hats, when last year she had had only a sun-bonnet! And a fountain-pen, like Laura's, and Laura's own silver watch! A lump came into Sarah's throat.

Perhaps Laura felt a lump in her own.

"Come," she said brightly but a little huskily. "You must try these things on, and you must hurry if you are going to bake waffles for this hungry brood." With one hand she took the umbrella from Sarah, with the other she unbuttoned her gingham dress. "Children, shut down the trunk-lid and sit on it. Now, Sarah, the gymnasium suit first."

Sarah chuckled hysterically as she was helped into the flannel blouse and bloomers.

"She looks like a bear," giggled Louisa Ellen.

"Like a pretty thin bear," said Sister Laura. "She will have to be fatter when she comes home. Louisa Ellen, run and get my work-basket. These elastics must be tightened. Now, Sarah, the school dresses, then the blue sailor suit and the blue hat. You are to wear those to-morrow."

Sarah stared down at her dress, still speechless with amazement and delight.

"And now the red dress. Your brother William chose this color, Sarah, and your hat and coat match it."

Fat and silent Albert opened his mouth to speak.

"She looks like—" he began, but could think of nothing to which to compare her. "She don't look like nothing."

"She looks like a—a fine lady," said Louisa Ellen. "Ach, when can we go to the Normal?"

Laura had turned down the glass in the old-fashioned bureau.

"Now, Sarah, take a good look, and then undress. These sleeves must be shortened a little. I can do that this evening. I'll pack the trunk while you get supper."

Sarah revolved obediently before the glass. But her eyes saw nothing. The lump in her throat seemed now to suffocate her; she struggled frantically to swallow it, but it only grew larger. The twins watched her in fright. Presently Louisa Ellen slid down from the trunk, and went across the room and touched Laura on the arm.

"Something is after Sarah," she whispered in shocked surprise. Never before had Sarah behaved like this.

Laura laid down her work.

"Why, Sarah, dear! What is the matter?"

It was a moment before Sarah could speak. She rubbed her eyes, then she looked down at the new red dress, and the new red coat, and then at the old gingham dress and apron on the floor, and at her hands, on which still lingered the marks of heavy toil.

"I would rather stay at home," she faltered. "Ellen Louisa and Louisa Ellen can have my things, and—and when they are big, they can go in—in the Normal. I—I would rather stay at home and do the work."

Laura sat down again in her chair by the window, and drew Sarah to her knee.

"Why would you rather stay at home, Sarah?" she asked gently. It was not strange that a reaction had come. There had been the struggle with Uncle Daniel, and then the long, hot months of summer, and now the immediate excitement of the afternoon. "Tell me, Sarah."

"I am too dumb," wailed Sarah. "Nobody can't teach me nothing."

"I thought I had taught you a good deal this summer."

"But there won't be any teachers like you at the Normal. I would rather stay at home. I am too old to go any more in the school. I am little but I am old."

"Like Runty," cried Louisa Ellen. The twins had been listening in frightened and fascinated attention. Runty was a pig which had never grown. "Runty is little, but he is old."

Even Sarah had to smile at this.

"But you will have too much work to do," she said to Laura. "It is not right for me to go."

Laura laughed.

"Cast no aspersions upon my ability to keep this house, young lady," she cried gayly. "And you will be no older than many of the girls and boys in your class. Now take off your dress and go mix your batter, and in ten minutes I'll be there, and then William will come home, and then we'll have supper, and then you must go to bed early."

When William came, there was no trace of Sarah's tears. He teased her gayly, as William always did, and said, as he helped himself to a fifth waffle, that the first four samples were pretty good, and that now he was really beginning to eat. It was not until she was safely in bed that the lump came back into her throat. This going away to school seemed suddenly worse than the long struggle against Uncle Daniel. She was going to live among strangers,—she would hear no more dear, familiar Pennsylvania-German, she would see only strange, critical faces. The Normal students would probably laugh at her, as she laughed at Jacob Kalb. They might make rhymes about her, as she made rhymes about Jacob.

Laura, who tiptoed into the room to put the red coat with its shortened sleeves into her trunk, heard her whisper.

"What did you say, Sarah?" she asked.

Sarah hid her face in her pillow in an agony of embarrassment. She could not possibly tell Laura what she was saying to herself, and Laura, thinking that she was talking in her sleep, tiptoed out again to complete her preparations for the next day's journey.

Before Sarah went to sleep, she smothered an hysterical giggle. One possible rhyme