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