"I am sure I don't know," Ruthy answered.
"I am going to have a trunk of my very own," said Ruby, proudly. "It will be like Maude Birkenbaum's, papa said it would be. It is to be black, and have a beautiful row of gold nails all around the top, and then at one end there will be 'M. D. B.' in letters made of the nails all driven in rows. Won't that be beautiful?"
"Yes, indeed," answered Ruthy. "But what will 'M. D. B.' stand for, Ruby?"
"Why, for my initials of course," Ruby answered. "Oh, no, I made a mistake. It won't be 'M. D. B.,' but 'R. T. H.,' to stand for Ruby Todd Harper. I forgot that my initials and Maude's were n't the same. But just think of it, Ruthy. To have a trunk of one's own and a key to it! I think that will be too lovely for anything."
"Are you glad you are going to boarding-school?" asked Ruthy, looking at her rather soberly.
"Why, yes, of course I am," said Ruby, trying to forget that it meant going away from home, too.
"How long will you stay, do you suppose?" asked Ruthy.
"Oh, I don't exactly know. Till mamma gets well again, papa said," Ruby replied. "I spose maybe about a year."
Ruby had rather vague ideas about the length of a year. She always counted a year from one Christmas to the next, or from one Fourth of July to the next, whichever happened to be nearest the time from which she was calculating; and though it seemed a long time when she looked back from one holiday to the last, yet she did not have a very good idea how much time it took for twelve months to pass away. Ruby knew her tables, and she could have told you in one minute, that it took three hundred and sixty-five days to make a year, but she did not know how long it took that procession of days to pass along and let the new year come in.
"Oh, dear," and Ruthy buried her face in the hay, and began to cry.