Rollo and Lucy looked at one another rather soberly. They did not seem to know what to say.
“I presume, however, you will not do this,” continued his mother.
“Why?” said Rollo.
“Because,” said his mother, “it requires a good deal of resolution, at first, to turn to duty when you have just been setting your heart on pleasure.”
“O, we have got resolution enough,” said Rollo.
“What duty do you think we had better do?” asked Lucy.
“If I were you,” replied Rollo’s mother, “I should first of all sit down and have a good reading lesson.”
Rollo and Lucy hesitated a little, but they concluded to take their mother’s advice at last, and went to Rollo’s little library, and chose a book, and then went down to the back entry, and sat down there, on a long cricket, and began to read.
At first, it was rather hard to do it, for it did not look very pleasant to either of them to sit down and read, just at the time when they expected to be gathering blueberries on the mountain. Rollo said, when they were opening the hook and finding the place, that, if they had gone, they should, by that time, have just about arrived at the foot of the mountain.
“Yes,” said Lucy, “but we must not think of that now. Besides, just see how it rains. It would be a fine time now to go up a mountain, wouldn’t it?”