chimed in Lulu.
"Oh, I"m just in ever such a hurry to begin!" said Grace. "Papa, which is my desk?"
"They are exactly alike," he said. "I thought of having yours made a trifle lower than the others, but concluded to give you a foot-rest instead, as you will soon grow tall enough to want it the height it now is. Max and Lulu, shall we give your little sister the first choice, as she is the youngest?"
"Yes, indeed, papa! yes, indeed!" they both answered with hearty good will, Max adding, "And Lu must have the next, if you please, papa."
That matter being speedily settled, the next question was when school was to begin. They were all three asking it.
"You may have your choice--we will put it to vote--whether we will begin to-morrow morning, or not till Monday," replied their father; "to-morrow, you will remember, is Thursday: we will begin school regularly at nine o"clock each morning; and it is to last four hours, not including five or ten minutes at the end of every hour for rest."
"That"ll be ever so nice!" was Lulu"s comment.
"That"s so," said Max. "I see you are not going to be hard on a fellow, papa."
"Wait till you are sure," said his father: "there"s to be no idling, no half attention to study, in those hours; you are to give your whole minds to your lessons, and I shall be very strict in exacting perfect recitations."
"Do you mean, sir, that we are to repeat the answers in the book, word for word?"
"No, not at all. I shall very much prefer to have you give the sense in your own words: then I shall know that you understand the meaning of the text, and are not repeating sounds merely like a parrot; that you have not been going over the words without trying to take in the ideas they are meant to express."
"But suppose we can"t catch the writer"s meaning?"
"If you fail to do so, after giving your best efforts to the task, your teacher will always be ready to explain to the best of his ability," was the smiling rejoinder. "But remember, all of you, that I intend you to use your own brains with as little a.s.sistance from other people"s as possible. Mind as well as body grows strong by exercise."
"But we haven"t decided when we are to begin," said Lulu.
"I vote for to-morrow," said Max: "afternoons will give us time enough to do any thing else we want to."
"Yes: I second the motion," she said.
"And I third it," added Grace. "Now, papa, you are laughing at me, and so is Max. Wasn"t that the right way to say it?"
"It was "most as right as Lu"s," said Max.
"And both will do well enough," said their father.
"I was going to ask if I might have Eva here to visit me to-morrow, papa," said Lulu; "but she"ll be busy with lessons in the morning too.
May I ask her to come in the afternoon?"
"Yes: you can ask her this evening; she will be here with the rest.
"Now I have something else to show you. Come with me."
He took Gracie"s hand again, and led them to a small, detached building, only a few yards distant,--a one-story frame, so prettily designed that it was quite an ornament to the grounds.
The children exclaimed in surprise; for, though it had been there on their former visit to Woodburn, it was so greatly changed that they failed to recognize it.
"It wasn"t here before, papa, was it?" asked Grace. "I"m sure I didn"t see it."
"Yes, it was here," he said, as he ushered them in, "but I have had it altered and fitted up expressly for my children"s use: you see, it is a little away from the house, so that the noise of saws and hammers will not be likely to prove an annoyance to your mamma and visitors. See, this is a workroom furnished with fret and scroll saws, and every sort of tool that I know of which would be likely to prove useful to you, Max and Lulu."
"Papa, thank you! how good and kind you are to us!" they both exclaimed, glancing about them, then up into his face, with sparkling eyes.
"You must have spent a great deal of money on us, sir," added Max thoughtfully.
"Yes, indeed," chimed in Lulu with a slight look of uneasiness. "Papa, I do hope you won"t have to go without any thing you want, because you"ve used up so much on these and other things for us."
"No, my dears; and if you are only good and obedient, and make the best use of what I have provided, I shall never regret any thing of what I have done for you.
"See here, Gracie."
He opened an inner door as he spoke, and showed a playroom as completely fitted up for its intended use as the room they were in. It was about the same size as the workroom, the two occupying the whole of the small building.
A pretty carpet covered the floor, a few pictures hung on the delicately tinted walls; there were chairs and a sofa of suitable size for the comfort of the intended occupants, and smaller ones on which Gracie"s numerous dolls were seated; a cupboard with gla.s.s doors showed sets of toy china dishes, and all the accessories for dinner and tea table; there were also a bureau, wash-stand, and table corresponding in size with the rest of the furniture; and the captain, pulling open the drawers of the first named, showed them well stocked with material of various kinds, suitable for making into new garments for the dolls, and with all the necessary implements,--needles, thread, thimbles, scissors, etc.
The two little girls were almost breathless with astonishment and delight.
"Papa!" cried Gracie, "you haven"t left one single thing for Santa Claus to bring us on Christmas!"
"Haven"t I?" he returned, laughing, and pinching her round, rosy cheek.
"Ah, well wouldn"t you as soon have them as presents from your own papa?"
"Oh, yes, papa! I know he"s just pretend, and it would be you or some of the folks that love me," she said, laying her cheek against his hand; "but I like to pretend it, "cause it"s such fun."
"There are a good many weeks yet to Christmas-time," remarked Lulu; "and perhaps our Santa Claus folks will think up something else for you, Gracie."
"Perhaps they may," said the captain, "if she is good: good children are not apt to be forgotten or neglected, and I hope mine are all going to be such."
"I"m quite sure we all intend to try hard, papa," Max said, "not hoping to gain more presents by it, but because you"ve been so good to us already."
"Indeed we do!" added his sisters.
CHAPTER XXI.
"Then all was jollity, Feasting and mirth, light wantonness and laughter."
"It seems nice and warm here," remarked Lulu; "but," glancing about, "I don"t see any fire."
Her father pointed to a register. "There is a cellar underneath, and a furnace in it," he said. "I thought that the safest way to heat these rooms for the use of very little people. I do not want to expose you to any danger of setting yourselves on fire."
"It"s getting a little dark," remarked Grace.
"Yes," he said. "We will go in now. It is time for you to be dressed for the evening."