"Mother always makes fools of Roxy's children," said Mehetabel, puffing zealously under the tea kettle. "There's a little maple sugar in that saucer up there, mother, if you will keep giving it to her," she said, still vigorously puffing. "And now, Gracie," she said, when, after a while, the fire seemed in tolerable order, "will you answer my question? Where is Dick?"
"Gone over in the lot, to get my bonnet."
"How came your bonnet off?" said Aunt Mehetabel. "I tied it on firm enough."
"Dick wanted me to take it off for him, to throw up for liberty," said Grace.
"Throw up for fiddlestick! Just one of Dick's cut-ups; and you was silly enough to mind him!"
"Why, he put up a flagstaff on the wood pile, and a flag to liberty, you know, that papa's fighting for," said Grace, more confidently, as she saw her quiet, blue-eyed mother, who had silently walked into the room during the conversation.
Grace's mother smiled and said, encouragingly, "And what then?"
"Why, he wanted me to throw up my bonnet and he his cap, and shout for liberty; and then the wind took it and carried it off, and he said I ought not to be sorry if I did lose it—it was an offering to liberty."
"And so I did," said Dick, who was standing as straight as a poplar behind the group; "and I heard it in one of father's letters to mother, that we ought to offer up every thing on the altar of liberty—and so I made an altar of the wood pile."
"Good boy!" said his mother; "always remember every thing your father writes. He has offered up every thing on the altar of liberty, true enough; and I hope you, son, will live to do the same."