Miss Nelson also made preparations for the after effects of this day of unrestraint. She laid in a good store of clean manuscript paper, for she knew many impositions would have to be written, and she looked well through the poetry books and books of French selections, to see which on an emergency would be suited to the capacities of the delinquents, who would be certain to have to learn them amidst tears and disgrace.
The children's maid, too, laid in stores of buttons and hooks, and tapes and ribbons, for the repairing of the clothes which must come to grief in the general riot.
Thus all that the careful elders could do was done, but the children cared for none of these things. To the children the day itself stood before them in all its glory, and they gave no thought or heed to any after-time of reckoning.
Mr. Wilton's birthday arrived in the beginning of the second week of the summer holidays. The first exuberance of joy, therefore, at having the boys at home again, was past, and all the young folk could give themselves up to the ecstasy which the day itself afforded.
"Good-by, Roderick," said Miss Elizabeth Wilton to her brother. She came in in her neat traveling-dress, and surprised him over a late breakfast.
"Why, where are you off to?" he asked.
"Where am I off to? I'm going to town, of course."
"To town, in August! What do you mean, Lizzie?"
"You may well shrug your shoulders, and ask me what I mean. You, Roderick, are the cause. Your birthday comes to-morrow."
"Good gracious! And I had forgotten all about it."