“We’ve an idea!  We’ve an idea!  We’ve found a way to help!” sang the two girls, pirouetting back into the circle of firelight.  “We won’t tell till it’s all started, but it’s perfectly splendid, and practical too.”

“And so ladylike!” added Julia triumphantly.

“How much?” asked Gilbert succinctly.

The girls whispered a minute or two, and appeared to be multiplying twenty-five first by fifteen, and then again by twenty.

“From three dollars and seventy-five cents to four dollars and a half a week according to circumstances!” answered Kathleen proudly.

“Will it take both of you?”

“Yes.”

“All your time?”

More nods and whispers and calculation.

“No, indeed; only three hours a day.”

“Any of my time?”

“Just a little.”

“I thought so!” said Gilbert loftily.  “You always want me and my hammer or my saw; but I’ll be busy on my own account; you’ll have to paddle your own canoe!”

“You’ll be paid for what you do for us,” said Julia slyly, giving Kathleen a poke, at which they both fell into laughter only possible to the very young.

Then suddenly there came a knock at the front door; a stamping of feet on the circular steps, and a noise of shaking off snow.

“Go to the door, Gilbert; who can that be on a night like this,—­although it is only eight o’clock after all!  Why, it’s Mr. Thurston!”

Ralph Thurston came in blushing and smiling, glad to be welcomed, fearful of intruding, afraid of showing how much he liked to be there.

“Good-evening, all!” he said.  “You see I couldn’t wait to thank you, Mrs. Carey!  No storm could keep me away to-night.”

“What has mother been doing, now?” asked Nancy.  “Her right hand is forever busy, and she never tells her left hand a thing, so we children are always in the dark.”

“It was nothing much,” said Mrs. Carey, pushing the young man gently into the high-backed rocker.  “Mrs. Harmon, Mrs. Popham, and I simply tried to show our gratitude to Mr. Thurston for teaching our troublesome children.”

“How did you know it was my birthday?” asked Thurston.

“Didn’t you write the date in Lallie Joy’s book?”

“True, I did; and forgot it long ago; but I have never had my birthday noticed before, and I am twenty-four!”

“It was high time, then!” said Mother Carey with her bright smile.

“But what did mother do?” clamored Nancy, Kathleen and Gilbert in chorus.

“She took my forlorn, cheerless room and made it into a home for me,” said Thurston.  “Perhaps she wanted me to stay in it a little more, and bother her less!  At any rate she has created an almost possible rival to the Yellow House!”

Ralph Thurston had a large, rather dreary room over Bill Harmon’s store, and took his meals at the Widow Berry’s, near by.  He was an orphan and had no money to spend on luxuries, because all his earnings went to pay the inevitable debts incurred when a fellow is working his way through college.