"Oh, good, good, good!" exclaimed Ollie, clapping her hands and jumping around the room for joy. "Now you will have to stay, and be my sister for a good long week."
Lucy hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. She was delighted to stay with her friend, but the thought of being so long away from her mamma made her feel almost homesick.
"I will write you a letter every day," said Mrs. Coit, seeing the cloud on her little girl's face.
But the cloud only stayed a minute. "After all," she thought, "mamma will only be gone for a week, and I would much rather be here with Ollie than at Aunt Mary's, where there is no one of my own age; and a letter every day! oh, that will be too delightful!"
"Well, I must go," said Mrs. Coit. "Thank you very much, Mrs. Rogers, for taking Lucy; I hope she will be a good child, and not give you any trouble. Good-by."
"Martha will send over your trunk this afternoon," she continued to Lucy. "It is all packed, and William Henry Johnson said he'd bring it over on his way to the mill this evening. Good-by, my dear," and Lucy was seized, hugged, and kissed, and almost before she knew what it was all about her mother had gone, and she was left alone, watching the wagon as it rolled slowly down the road.
She was roused by hearing Ollie's voice close behind her.
"Oh, Lucy, let's go up-stairs, and get the room ready for you. I must move the things in my closet, and make enough bare nails for your dresses."
So the two girls went up-stairs together, and the afternoon was passed in preparations for the coming week.
The next morning Lucy and Ollie went to school as usual, only instead of having a long solitary walk, they each had the other's company, which they found very pleasant. The girls at school were quite astonished to hear that they were spending the week together.