o much for you, she
is worrying all the time for fear something may happen to you, or that
you may get into some mischief. Now if she knows you are safe at
school with Aunt Emma, where you will be well taken care of, and will
study your lessons, and try to be good and obedient, then she will feel
so much happier about you that it will do more toward helping her to
get well than all the medicine in the world. There are some things
that I can do for her. I can take care of her, and give her medicine,
and see that nothing troubles her in the house, but there is something
for you to do that I cannot do. This is to be your share of helping
dear mother get well. If you go away bravely, and try to study and be
a good girl, so that Aunt Emma can write home in each letter that you
are doing just as mother would wish you to do, you will be helping her
even more than I will. If you think only about yourself, you will cry
about going, and fret to come home, until mother will be troubled about
you, and perhaps think it best for you to come home again; but if you
think about mother, you will be my own brave little daughter, and then
mother will soon be well again, and we will send for our little Ruby,
and she will come home wiser and better-behaved than when she went
away, and we will all be so happy. I am sure I know which you are
going to do."

"I am going to be just as brave as can be," Ruby answered, winking back
the tears which had been trying to roll down her cheeks, and rubbing
out of sight the great shining one which had splashed down upon
Tipsey's soft fur. "Yes, papa, I am going to be just as brave as
anything. I won't cry. I won't say one word about wanting to come
home in my letters, and I will study so hard that I shall stay up at
the head of the class just as I do here, and the teacher will think I
am ever so--"

"Be careful, darling," interrupted her father. "I don't want my little
girl to think so much of herself. If you go to school thinking that
you are going to be so much more clever than all the other little
girls, I am afraid you will find out that you are sadly mistaken, and
then you will be very unhappy. Don't think of excelling the other
girls, but think of doing the very best you can because it is right,
and because it will make mother and father happy. I would rather have
my little Ruby at the very foot of the class, and have her unselfish
and gentle, than have her at the head, with a proud a