hen they reached home. Dulce who was at
the gate looking out for them, nearly smothered them with kisses.

"Oh, you dear things! how glad I am to get you back," she said,
holding them both. "Have you really only been away since yesterday
morning? It seems a week at least."

"You ridiculous child! as though we believe that! But how is mother?"

"Oh, pretty well: but she will be better now you are back. Do you
know," eying them both very gravely, "I think it was a wise thing of
you to go away like that? it has shown me that mother and I could not
do without you at all: we should have pined away in those lodgings; it
has quite reconciled me to the plan," finished Dulce, in a loud
whisper that reached her mother's ears.

"What plan? What are you talking about, Dulce? and why do you keep
your sisters standing in the hall?" asked Mrs. Challoner, a little
irritably. But her brief nervousness vanished at the sight of their
faces: she wanted nothing more, she told herself, but to see them
round her, and hear their voices.

She grew quite cheerful when Phillis told her about the new papers,
and how Mrs. Crump was to clean down the cottage, and how Crump had
promised to mow the grass and paint the greenhouse, and Jack and
Bobbie were to weed the garden-paths.

"It is a perfect wilderness now, mother: you never saw such a place."

"Never mind, so that it will hold us, and that we shall all be
together," she returned, with a smile. "But Dulce talked of some plan:
you must let me hear it, my dears; you must not keep me in the dark
about anything. I know we shall all have to work," continued the poor
lady; "but if we be all together, if you will promise not to leave me,
I think I could bear anything."

"Are we to tell her!" motioned Nan with her lips to Phillis; and as
Phillis nodded, "Yes," Nan gently and quietly began unfolding their
plan.

But, with all her care and all Phillis's promptings, the revelation
was a great shock to Mrs. Challoner; in her weakened state she seemed
hardly able to bear it.

Dulce repented bitterly her incautious whisper when she saw her
sisters' tired faces, and their fruitless attempts to soften the
effects of such a blow. For a little while, Mrs. Challoner seemed on
the brink of despair; she would not listen; she abandoned herself to
lamentations; she became so hysterical at last that Dorothy was
summoned from the kitchen and taken into confidence.

"Mother, you are breaking our hearts," Na