Phil went up-stairs and gathered together the broken pieces of his wind harp.  He folded each piece up carefully in paper, and put them all away.  “No more fairy stories,” he said to himself.  “Well, I suppose I am getting beyond them, and must put up with sober facts; but they are not half so nice,” he said, with a sigh—­“not half so nice.”  Then he took out his sketch-book and pencils, and prepared for work.

CHAPTER XIV

PLANS FOR THE WINTER

Summer had gone.  Visitors had gone.  Graham had gone to school.  The banks of the lake were red and yellow, brown and purple, with autumnal foliage.  Aunt Rachel was superintending the making of preserves.  Lisa was at work on the piazza.  Phil was sketching.

Slowly up the garden path came old Joe.  He took off his hat and stood still a moment waiting for Phil to speak.

“Well, Joe, what is it?” said Phil, hardly looking up, he was so busy.

“This is just as fine as ever the garden of Eden was, but old Adam had to go, you know, Massa Phil.”  He had lately, of his own accord, put the Massa before Phil’s name.

“What are you driving at, Joe?” asked Phil, absently.

“I mean I’s a-gwine home, Massa Phil.”

“To the city?” said Phil, surprised into attention.

“Yes, back to New York.  I wants to go to work.”

“Have you not enough to do here?”

“No,” said Joe, with a chuckle.  “It’s all play here—­no real hard work sich as I’s customed to.”

“It is time you took it easy, Joe,” said Phil.

“True nuff, but I’s not one of the easy sort.  Besides, who knows, Massa Phil, but there may be other chillen—­poor sick chillen—­waitin’ for to hear my fiddle an’ be comforted?”

Phil looked up hastily; a bright look of gratitude and love came into his eyes.

Just then Miss Schuyler appeared, with a glass jar of jelly in her hand; the maid was following with a trayful.

“Joe wants to go to the city, Aunt Rachel,” said Phil.

“I dare say,” was the ready response.  “He wants a little gossip over the kitchen fires, and he wants this nice jar of jelly for his bread-and-butter when he has company to tea; and as we all are going home next week, he may as well wait for the rest of us.”

“Aunt Rachel!” said Phil, in dismay.  Going home to the city seemed like going back to poverty and illness, and the garret room he so well remembered.

Aunt Rachel divined it all.  “You belong to me now, Phil.  Lisa and I are partners henceforth; and while you and I travel in search of health, study, and improvement, Lisa is going to keep house for us in her own nice, quiet way.”

“Travel!—­where?—­when?” said Phil, eagerly.

“The doctors suggest our going abroad—­to a warm climate for the winter—­where we please; in summer, to the German baths.”

“Oh, Aunt Rachel!”