Presently Miriam, whose years had not yet reached fifteen, vigorously pushed a pair of slippers into an unoccupied crevice in the trunk, and then, drawing back, seated herself on a stool.

“The delightful thing about this packing is,” she said, “that it will never have to be done again.  I am not going to any school, or any country place to board; you are not going to a hotel, not to any house kept by other people; our things do not have to be packed separately; we can put them in anywhere where they will fit; we are both going to the same place; we are going home, and there we shall stay.”

“Always?” asked her brother, looking up with a smile.

“Always,” answered Miriam.  “When one gets a home, one stays there.  At least I do.”

“And you will not even go away to school?” he asked.

“By no means,” said his sister, looking at him with much earnestness.  “I have been to school ever since I was six years old,—­nearly nine years,—­and I positively declare that that is long enough for any girl.  Others stay later, but then they do not begin so soon.  As to finishing my education, as they call it, I shall do that at home.  What a happy thought!  It makes me want to skip.  And you are to be my teacher, Ralph.  I am sure you know everything that I shall need to know.”

Ralph laughed.

“I suppose you will examine me to see what I do know,” he said, as he folded a heavy overcoat and laid it in the trunk.

Miriam sprang up and began to collect more of her effects.

“We shall see about that,” she said, and then, suddenly stopping, she turned toward her brother.  “There is one thing, Ralph, about which I need not examine you at all, and that is goodness of heart.  If you had not had a very good heart indeed, you would not have waited and waited and waited—­fairly pinching yourself, I expect—­till I could get away from school and we could both go together and look at our new home in the very same instant.”

Ralph Haverley was a brown-haired, bright-eyed young fellow under thirty.  He had been educated for a profession, but the death of his parents, before he reached his majority, made it necessary for him to go to work at something by which he could immediately earn money enough to support not only himself, but his little sister.  At his father’s death, which occurred a month or two after that of his mother, young Haverley found that the family resources, which had never been great, had almost entirely disappeared.  He could barely scrape together enough money to send Miriam to a boarding-school and to keep himself alive until he could get work.  He had spent a great part of his boyhood in the country.  His tastes and disposition inclined him to an out-door life, and, had he been able, he would have gone to the West, and established himself upon a ranch.  But this was impossible; he must do the work that was nearest at hand, and as soon as he found it, he set himself at it with a will.