"Look here! don't you think our very next thing, or, at least, one of the next, ought to be a furnace? I don't like those stove pipes, if they are Russia. A furnace would heat more evenly, and with less dust, and Bud could manage a furnace as well as he can these stoves."
How naturally they talked about their future sacrifices! What would have utterly appalled them a few months before, were spoken of carelessly now as "next things."
Ruth Jennings readily assented to the necessity for a furnace, but added:
"I don't believe we shall have Bud for engineer. He wants to go to school, did you know it? And what is more, Mrs. Ansted intends to send him. Fanny told me about it last night. She says her mother thinks Louis intended that Bud should have an education, and she wants to carry out all his plans. I did not know that Louis Ansted ever had any such plans, did you?"
Then Nettie Burdick, after a thoughtful pause:
"Oh, well, girls, if we can't have Bud for engineer, perhaps we can have him to preach for us some day. He told me last night that if he lived he meant to preach; and I believe he will, and preach well, too. Just think of it: Bud a minister!"