“Good-bye, my dears!  I shall be back early on Monday morning; so take care of yourselves, and be sure you all go and hear Mr. Emerboy preach to-morrow.  My regards to your mother, John.  Come, Solon!”

But Solon merely cocked one ear, and remained a fixed fact; for long experience had induced the philosophic beast to take for his motto the Yankee maxim, “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead!” He knew things were not right; therefore he did not go ahead.

“Oh, by-the-way, girls, don’t forget to pay Tommy Mullein for bringing up the cow:  he expects it to-night.  And, Di, don’t sit up till daylight, nor let Laura stay out in the dew.  Now, I believe, I’m off.  Come, Solon!”

But Solon only cocked the other ear, gently agitated his mortified tail, as premonitory symptoms of departure, and never stirred a hoof, being well aware that it always took three “comes” to make a “go.”

“Bless me!  I’ve forgotten my spectacles.  They are probably shut up in that volume of Herbert on my table.  Very awkward to find myself without them ten miles away.  Thank you, John.  Don’t neglect to water the lettuce, Nan, and don’t overwork yourself, my little ‘Martha.’  Come”——­

At this juncture, Solon suddenly went off, like “Mrs. Gamp,” in a sort of walking swoon, apparently deaf and blind to all mundane matters, except the refreshments awaiting him ten miles away; and the benign old pastor disappeared, humming “Hebron” to the creaking accompaniment of the bulgy chaise.

Laura retired to take her siesta; Nan made a small carbonaro of herself by sharpening her sister’s crayons, and Di, as a sort of penance for past sins, tried her patience over a piece of knitting, in which she soon originated a somewhat remarkable pattern, by dropping every third stitch, and seaming ad libitum.  If John had been a gentlemanly creature, with refined tastes, he would have elevated his feet and made a nuisance of himself by indulging in a “weed”; but being only an uncultivated youth, with a rustic regard for pure air and womankind in general, he kept his head uppermost, and talked like a man, instead of smoking like a chimney.

“It will probably be six months before I sit here again, tangling your threads and maltreating your needles, Nan.  How glad you must feel to hear it!” he said, looking up from a thoughtful examination of the hard-working little citizens of the Industrial Community settled in Nan’s work-basket.

“No, I’m very sorry; for I like to see you coming and going as you used to, years ago, and I miss you very much when you are gone, John,” answered truthful Nan, whittling away in a sadly wasteful manner, as her thoughts flew back to the happy times when a little lad rode a little lass in the big wheelbarrow, and never spilt his load,—­when two brown heads bobbed daily side by side to school, and the favorite play was “Babes in the Wood,” with Di for a somewhat peckish robin to cover the small martyrs with any vegetable substance that lay at hand.  Nan sighed, as she thought of these things, and John regarded the battered thimble on his fingertip with increased benignity of aspect as he heard the sound.