"Isn't he a darling," whispered Agnes, glancing toward Philip, who was intent on his strawberries.
"Yes, he is a remarkable child; his mother must be very fond of him. I have been planning something to-day, Agnes, for all hands," looking round at the children, as she spoke.
"What?" asked her sister, brightening.
"I can't tell you until we are alone. But it will bring the roses to somebody's cheeks, and be very nice for all the somebodies."
"Don't let us do any thing this afternoon, but talk or read," proposed Agnes; and hearing this, Philip hurried to the school-room for his own little chair, so that he might lay his head on Ruth's lap and listen. But Christus Consolator was too profound, and lulled by the sound of Agnes's sweet voice, and Ruth's caressing touch, he slept.
"When the sun goes down it is time for little birds to be in their nests," said Ruth, and Philip now wide awake and knowing what was to follow, ran to tell Martha to get her hat. The first time he had staid, Ruth sent word to his mother that she would take him home, and ever since it had been understood.
"One on one side, and one on the other," he said, as he placed himself between Ruth and Agnes, offering a hand to each. But Ruth asked what was to become of poor Martha, and soon the two children were talking as gravely, and looking as demurely side by side, as if they had been grandfather and grandmother.
On their way home, while Martha walked before, Ruth developed her idea, which was that they should have a pic-nic, perhaps several of them during vacation, "as it would be so expensive to go away for a length of time you know. Just a family affair," she continued, "and we will take the children along to enliven us."
Agnes fell in with the plan very readily, and pictures of ferns, mosses and lichens at once rose before her delighted vision.
There were trying days still to be passed in the school-room, days on which Ruth felt it would be a relief to scream out or do something desperate. But when she looked at the little ones under her care, trying to be good and obedient while under control, she chided herself for her impatience, at the same time relaxing her discipline. But the days went by and the holidays came, and Miss Ruth's joy at her freedom was not one bit less than her pupils'; though she didn't run screaming to tell every one that "school was broken up." "We might as well go soon, Ruth. I feel as if I could scarcely breathe here," said Agnes, a few days after school had closed.