“His mother won’t let him come, anyway,” Fred said smiling.  “So don’t set your heart on seeing him, Nell.”

“How discouraging you are Fred,” Nellie replied laughing.  “Now, I believe he will come.  Tom would be a smart boy if he had a chance, I think.  But just think what it must be like to live with two people like the Motherwells.  You do not realise it, Fred, because you have had the superior advantages of living with clever people like your brother Peter and your sister Eleanor Mary; isn’t that so, Peter?”

Peter Slater, the youngest of the family, who had just come in, laid down the milk-pails before replying.

“We have done our best for them all, Nellie,” he said modestly.  “I hope they will repay us.  But did I hear you say Tom Motherwell was coming?”

“You heard Nell say so,” Fred answered, checking over the names.  “Nell seems to like Tom pretty well.”

“I do, indeed,” Nellie assented, without turning around.

“You show good taste, Eleanor,” Peter said as he washed his hands.

“Who is going to drive into town for Camilla?” Nellie asked that evening.

“I am,” Fred answered promptly.

“No, you’re not, I am,” Peter declared.

George looked up hastily.

“I am going to bring Miss Rose out,” he said firmly.

Then they laughed.

“Father,” Nellie said gravely, “just to save trouble among the boys, will you do it?”

“With the greatest of pleasure,” her father said, smiling.

Under Pearl’s ready sympathy Tom began to feel the part of the stricken lover, and to become as eager to meet Nellie as Egbert had been to meet the beautiful Edythe.  He moped around the field that afternoon and let Arthur do the heavy share of the work.

The next morning before Mrs. Motherwell appeared Pearl and Tom decided upon the plan of campaign.  Pearl was to get his Sunday clothes taken to the bluff in the pasture field, sometime during the day.  Then in the evening Tom would retire early, watch his chance, slip out the front door, make his toilet on the bluff, and then, oh bliss! away to Edythe.  Pearl had thought of having him make a rope of the sheets; but she remembered that this plan of escape was only used when people were leaving a place for good—­such as a prison; but for coming back again, perhaps after all, it was better to use the front door.  Egbert had used the sheets, though.

Fortune favoured Pearl’s plans that afternoon.  A book agent called at the back door with the prospectus of a book entitled, “Woman’s Influence in the Home.”  While he was busy explaining to Mrs. Motherwell the great advantages of possessing a copy of this book, and she was equally busy explaining to him her views on bookselling as an occupation for an able-bodied man, Pearl secured Tom’s suit, ran down the front stairs, out the front door and away to the bluff.