or nothing."

"Oh!" said Bessy, "I don't want any one to read this book who does not
like it. But I know mother would be better pleased if you were stopping
at home quiet, rather than rambling to Ned Bates's at this time of
night."

"I know what mother would like as well as you, and I'm not going to be
preached to by a girl," said Jem, taking up his cap and going out. Tom
yawned and went up to bed. Bessy sat brooding over the evening.

"So much as I thought and I planned! I'm sure I tried to do what was
right, and make the boys happy at home. And yet nothing has happened
as I wanted it to do. Every one has been so cross and contrary. Tom
would take Jenny up when she ought to have been in bed. Jem did not
care a straw for this book that I borrowed on purpose for him, but sat
laughing. I saw, though he did not think I did, when all was going
provoking and vexatious. Mary--no! Mary was a help and a comfort, as she
always is, I think, though she is so stupid over her book. Mary always
contrives to get people right, and to have her own way somehow; and yet
I'm sure she does not take half the trouble I do to please people."

Jem came back soon, disappointed because Ned Bates was out, and could
not give him any ash-wood. Bessy said it served him right for going at
that time of night, and the brother and sister spoke angrily to each
other all the way upstairs, and parted without even saying good-night.
Jenny was asleep when Bessy entered the bedroom which she shared with
her sisters and her mother; but she saw Mary's wakeful eyes looking at
her as she came in.

"Oh, Mary," said she, "I wish mother was back. The lads would mind her,
and now I see they'll just go and get into mischief to spite and plague
me."

"I don't think it's for that," said Mary, softly. "Jem did want that
ash-wood, I know, for he told me in the morning he didn't think that
deal would do. He wants to make a wedge to keep the window from rattling
so on windy nights; you know how that fidgets mother."

The next day, little Mary, on her way to school, went round by Ned
Bates's to beg a piece of wood for her brother Jem; she brought it home
to him at dinner-time, and asked him to be so good as to have everything
ready for a quiet whittling at night, while Tom or Bessy read aloud. She
told Jenny she would make haste with her lessons, so as to be ready to
come to bed early, and talk to her about school (a grand, wonderful
place, in Jenny's eyes), and thus