"The party will be large enough without me, won't it, mother?" queried Mildred. "You know I have a piece of sewing on hand that I am very desirous to finish before night."
"Let it go, child; you need air and exercise far more than I do the dress," was the kind and smiling rejoinder.
Then came a chorus of entreaties from all the children that mother would go too.
But she would not hear of it, had a matter of importance to attend to at home; perhaps, if to-morrow should prove pleasant, she would go with them then.
And so with smiles and merry, loving words she helped to make them ready and sent them on their way.
Barely in time, for hardly were they out of sight when a wagon drove up with two large, weighty looking boxes. Rupert and two men, beside the driver, were in the vehicle also, and it took all their strength, with Mr. Keith's added, to lift and carry the boxes into the house.
"Oh, it is a piano! I know it is!" cried Rupert, as they set down in the hall the box he had described to his mother.
"A pianer did ye say?" queried one of the men, as for a moment they all stood panting from their exertions and gazing down upon the burden they had just deposited upon the floor. "Let's get it open quick then, for I never see one in my life."
Rupert ran for the hatchet, and in another five minutes the lid was off the box, and all remaining doubt vanished.
"It is, it is!" cried the lad, fairly capering about the room in his delight. "Oh, what a joyful surprise for the girls and all of us! But where on earth did it come from? Father—"