"The young rascal!" said the Bishop.
"Do you," sobbed Joan—"do you think father will be harsh with him?"
"I don't doubt it for a moment," said the Bishop, cheerfully. "Tom will be treated to just enough punishment, and not a grain too much."
Her uncle laid his hand tenderly on her dark head. "See here, my little girl," he said, "I want you to take life less heroically. I am going to give you a token to remind you of this. You keep looking up at my Joan of Arc. Well, she is yours. No, you must accept it, for I can spare her easily. I don't care to own too many impediments in my walk through the world. You must hang the picture in your own room; and whenever you look at it I want you to say to yourself, not Joan of Arc, but—Joan of Home. You don't understand what I mean just yet, but some day as you say this you will understand suddenly, and better than if I had explained it. Now run away, my dear."
"Dear! dear!" thought the Bishop to himself, as he shut his study door, "Brother Tom has plainly been reading the riot act. I wonder if his boy will ever make him another declaration of independence?" His eye fell on the calendar on his desk, and he raised his eyebrows, smiling. "Why," he said, "what a man of peace I am! It's the great Fourth of July, and I never realized it. Well, Tom and his family have been Celebrating and Declaring enough for us all. I wonder how it will end?"
II.
"Now, Joan, I think the table looks as if a butler had set it," said Tom, as he arranged the napkins in little hillocks.
"You are awfully good to me, Tom. Indeed, I couldn't keep house without you. I hardly knew a carafe from a finger-bowl until you taught me. Aunt Jane never thought or cared for such things."
"Aunt Milly never thought or cared for anything else," said Tom. "If I've taught you some things, you've untaught me more, Joan. Anyhow, what good does it do a man to know how to serve a dinner? It doesn't help me to sledge."
"Perhaps it does. Father said yesterday that you were more accurate in sledging than any man on the works."