tay as long as you like, the longer the better. Aunt will
have such pleasure in taking care of your poor old women--the
pin-cushion and the housewife woman, I mean. But I am much afraid that
I shall not make up your loss, good little things as you are, I shall
never manage it; but I must try. I hope I have got the goodwill, though
I have nothing else."

In this place Bessy stopped for actual want of breath.

"What is it?" said Lucy; "what do you mean, dear Bessy?"

"What is it? don't you know? How strange--no, it is not, neither; Mr.
Fairchild said he should not tell you till it was settled; and so there
can be no harm in telling it. And are you not delighted?--you don't
look delighted. Your papa said that there could be nothing which would
please you so much."

"But what is it?" asked the little girls; "how can we be delighted,
when we do not know what it is?"

"Have not I told you?" asked Bessy; "I thought I told you at first.
Why, we are to live in this place, and take care of it, and see that
everything is kept in order; every tree, and every bench, and
everything you love. How you stare!" added Bessy; "how round your eyes
are! I don't mean this hut; did you think I meant that my aunt and I
were to live in it, and take care of the benches?"

"The house, the house?" answered Lucy, with a cry of joy; "are you and
Mrs. Goodriche to have the house and the garden; and to take care of
the poor people, and the school, and the hut, and the arbour, and the
benches, and our little room, and the parlour, and the roses? Oh,
Bessy, Bessy, dear Bessy, now am I glad indeed! and we will come to you
here, and you shall come to us there. Oh, Emily, Emily, I am so happy!"

The gentle eyes of Emily sparkled as brightly as Lucy's did, when she
heard this news, though she said little; but she whispered to her
sister, the next minute: "Now, Lucy, we should not have cried so much,
it was not right."

Lucy answered aloud: "No, Emily, we should not; but I hope that we
shall cry no more. If the whole world had been picked, we could not
have found any people we like so well to live here as Mrs. Goodriche
and Bessy."

"Aunt is at the house, she is come to spend the day here; and Mr.
Fairchild sent me here to look for you; and we shall come in when you
go out; and things are to be left as they are now, only a few to be
moved. Aunt will sell her rubbish furniture, and we are to be so tidy,
and I am to have your little room and bed."