pa 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.

"Why, what is the matter?" asked Ruby, in surprise.

"I shall miss you so dreadfully," sobbed Ruthy. "I shall not have any
one to play with, that is, any one like you, and I shall miss you all
the time."

"But I am going to ask your mamma to let you go with me," Ruby said
comfortingly. "I forgot to tell you, but I truly will. Do you suppose
I would go away off to boarding-school without you, Ruthy Warren? You
might know I would n't. Of course not. Come and let's go in now and
ask your mother if you can't go with me."

But Ruthy cried harder than ever.

"But I don't want to go to boarding-school," she sobbed. "I want to
stay with my mamma. I should just die if I went way off away from her.
I don't want you to go either, Ruby. I don't see what you think it is
nice to go to boarding-school for, anyway."

"Now, Ruthy, I thought you would go with me, even if you didn't think
it would be very nice at first," Ruby said, in rather reproving tones.
"Of course you think it would n't be nice, but it would be after you
got used to it, and you would have a trunk, too, maybe. Wouldn't that
be nice?"

But the trunk was no comfort to Ruthy. She could not understand how
Ruby could bear to think of leaving her mother. She was quite sure she
would never be willing to do it, and not Ruby's most eloquent
representations to her of how delightful going away with a trunk would
be, could induce her to want to accompany her.

"Oh, I wish you were not going, either," was all that Ruby could coax
from her, after she had talked until she was tired.

CHAPTER VII.

MORE PREPARATIONS.

Thee was nothing that vain little Ruby enjoyed more than a sense of
importance,