Drip, drip! fell the rain, but none of the children regretted that they were not likely to go out of the house. “I don’t mind the rain one bit!” cried Elsie. “I’m glad that it rains; we’ll get on so famously with our work!”
Drip, drip! fell the rain; clink, clink! fell the hammer of Lucius; and blithe sounded his whistle, as he labored in the midst of his squares of pasteboard, strips of wood, and lengths of wire. The schoolboy set to his work with a will; and how pleasant is work when we have strength and spirit to do it, and feel that we have a worthy object before us!
No one was up earlier than Dora. She sprang from her bed before twilight had given place to day-light, so impatient was she to get to her embroidery pattern again. The noise of Dora’s rising awoke Agnes, who had not passed so good a night as her more vigorous twin had done, the sickly girl having been several times disturbed by her cough.
“What are you about, Dora?” murmured Agnes, in a drowsy and rather complaining tone; “I’m sure that it can’t be nearly time to get up.”
“Oh, I like to set about my new work quickly, and get a good piece of it done before breakfast,” was Dora’s reply.
“There will be plenty of time for work between this and Christmas; I wish that you would keep quiet and let me rest,” yawned Agnes.
“You can rest if you wish it; I won’t make a noise,” replied Dora. “But for my part I like to be up and doing. You know that:
‘Early to bed, and early to rise,
Is the way to be healthy, wealthy, and wise.’”
Agnes said nothing in contradiction of the old proverb which her sister had quoted, but turned round on her pillow, and with a weary yawn composed herself again to sleep. She thought that it would be time enough to get up when Susan should call her at a quarter to seven, and she only wished that Dora had thought so also, for it fidgeted Agnes to hear her moving about in the room. But Dora had cared as little about disturbing the sleep of a sickly sister as she had about letting her mother go out in the rain. Dora admired her own energy, and looked upon Agnes almost with scorn, as being lazy, cold, and dull, with not a bit of enthusiasm in her nature.