, and lulled by the sound of
Agnes's sweet voice, and Ruth's caressing touch, he slept.

"When the sun goes down it is time for little birds to be in their
nests," said Ruth, and Philip now wide awake and knowing what was to
follow, ran to tell Martha to get her hat. The first time he had staid,
Ruth sent word to his mother that she would take him home, and ever
since it had been understood.

"One on one side, and one on the other," he said, as he placed himself
between Ruth and Agnes, offering a hand to each. But Ruth asked what was
to become of poor Martha, and soon the two children were talking as
gravely, and looking as demurely side by side, as if they had been
grandfather and grandmother.

On their way home, while Martha walked before, Ruth developed her idea,
which was that they should have a pic-nic, perhaps several of them
during vacation, "as it would be so expensive to go away for a length of
time you know. Just a family affair," she continued, "and we will take
the children along to enliven us."

Agnes fell in with the plan very readily, and pictures of ferns, mosses
and lichens at once rose before her delighted vision.

There were trying days still to be passed in the school-room, days on
which Ruth felt it would be a relief to scream out or do something
desperate. But when she looked at the little ones under her care, trying
to be good and obedient while under control, she chided herself for her
impatience, at the same time relaxing her discipline. But the days went
by and the holidays came, and Miss Ruth's joy at her freedom was not one
bit less than her pupils'; though she didn't run screaming to tell every
one that "school was broken up." "We might as well go soon, Ruth. I feel
as if I could scarcely breathe here," said Agnes, a few days after
school had closed.

"A day won't help you much if you are in that state. What shall you do
all the other warm days?"

"Imagine I am in the woods," was the laughing reply.

"Then you had better bring your imagination to bear upon it now. Guy
will have to dine down town that day. I fancy he will not like it very
well, for he is so fastidious. Guy was certainly meant to be rich."

"Why not ask him to go with us?" suggested Agnes.

"If you want to be laughed at you will. Imagine our Guy going with two
women, two children, and a lot of baskets, to spend a day in the woods!"

"I should think he might enjoy the change quite as much as we. But men
are queer,