Soon after Easter the two brothers went away. There was much weeping in the house, but when the dog-cart had rolled out of the yard gate his mother pressed her tear-stained face against Paul’s cheeks and whispered,
“You have long been neglected, my poor child; now we two are together again as before.”
“Mamma, tiss me, too!” screamed little Kate, stretching out her tiny arms, and her sister did the same.
“Yes; of course you are there as well!” their mother cried, and bright sunshine lighted up her pale face.
And then she took one on each arm and approached the window with them, and gazed a long time at the White House.
Paul hid his head in the folds of her dress and did the same.
His mother looked down upon him, and as she met the prematurely wise look in the child’s eyes she blushed a little and smiled, but neither spoke a word.
When his father came back from the town he wanted Paul to begin going to school.
His mother grew very sad, and begged that he might be left at home for one half-year longer, so that she should not miss the two eldest ones too much. She would teach him herself, and surely get him on more than the school-master would do. But his father would not listen to anything of the sort, and called her “a weeping fool.”
Paul was terrified. The longing for school that he had formerly felt had now quite disappeared; but then of course the brothers, whom he wished to emulate, were no longer there.