The other boys were there playing in the hay, and at any other time Matilda would have begun to quarrel directly; but with her good resolves fresh in mind she began to coax them to come off the hay, and show her how to make bossy stand on his feet.
Her tone was so pleasant that they came at once, wondering at the change; and for the next half hour they had a merry time together.
Then she returned to the house with the baby mounted on her back.
When her father came home to supper, he evidently expected to find her cross and impatient at having been kept from accompanying her companions to the grove. He heard her singing before he reached the gate, and was not a little delighted to find his wife sitting at her sewing, and Matilda putting the last dishes on the table for tea.
"Well, now, this is as it ought to be," he said heartily, as they drew their chairs about the table. "Wife, you said you wanted a new gown, and here's money to buy cloth for you and Matilda, too. I'm always ready with the cash for good daughters."
A few hours later, when the young girl retired to her bed, she said to herself,—"It isn't so very hard to do right after all. How pleased father was. Now if I only knew that Sallie wouldn't say anything about what I told her, I should be happier than I have been for a month."
I wish Hatty had been there to remind her that she ought to thank her heavenly Father for help to keep her resolutions, else she could not have done one right thing. As it was, Hatty was giving uncle Oliver and Esther an account of her call at Mrs. Munson's; and they were thinking,—"What a blessing our dear girl is to us, and how lonely our cottage would be without her."
The nuts, a peck of each, were safely stored in the attic to dry, before the old man came home to supper; and then Hatty had time to run to a neighbor's with the vest Esther had just completed.
In the evening they had family-prayers, a service the two girls commenced by themselves, but which uncle Oliver soon joined; and then after Hatty's account of her afternoon, they retired to rest for the night, the blessing which God has promised the peace-makers resting upon them.
