"Perhaps my sister will be better and I can come home to-morrow," added Mrs. Hawley cheerfully. Then she kissed the children and bade them good-bye, and the horses dashed off down the road with a great jingling of bells.
The girls looked a little sober when they went back into the big empty farmhouse, but Leland tried to cheer them up. "We'll have a jolly time keeping house," he said. "What's the first thing to be done?"
"The dishes, of course," replied his sister; "there are always dishes to do, no matter what happens."
The boys cleared the table, while Rachel and Dorothy washed and wiped the dishes, and set the table for breakfast. Then they brought in some wood and built a big fire in the fireplace.
The flames went roaring up the chimney, and the children sat for a long time before the fire, watching the rings of sparks that twisted in and out on the soot-covered bricks. "Children going home from school," they called them, and the last one to burn out was the one to stay after school for a whipping.
"Let's roast some chestnuts," Leland suggested, when there was a good bed of hot ashes, and he ran up in the attic to get a bagful that he had been saving for just such an occasion.
It was fun to push the chestnuts into the fire with a long poker and then watch them pop out when they were roasted. Sometimes they flew across the room, or under the tables and chairs, and then there was a great hunt for them.
"We might wish on the chestnuts," Rachel suggested. "If they pop out on the hearth, our wish will come true, but if they fly into the fire, it won't."
"Oh, yes!" cried Lawrence; "that's just the thing to do. Girls first,—you begin, Rachel."
"No, Dorothy is my guest," replied his cousin; "she must have the first turn."