“I’m excited,” whispered Kathleen as they stole down the back stairs and went into the parlor for the funeral urns, which they carried silently to the dining room.  These safely deposited, they took You Dirty Boy from its abominable pedestal of Mexican onyx (also Cousin Ann’s gift) and staggered under its heavyweight, their natural strength being considerably sapped by suppressed laughter.

Nancy chose an especially large and stout barrel.  They put a little (very little) excelsior in the bottom, then a pair of dumb-bells, then a funeral urn, then a little hay, and another funeral urn, crosswise.  The spaces between were carelessly filled in with Indian clubs.  On these they painfully dropped You Dirty Boy, and on top of him the other pair of funeral urns, more dumbbells, and another Indian club.  They had packed the barrel in the corner where it stood, so they simply laid the cover on top and threw a piece of sacking carelessly over it.  The whole performance had been punctuated with such hysterical laughter from Kathleen that she was too weak to be of any real use,—­she simply aided and abetted the chief conspirator.  The night was not as other nights.  The girls kept waking up to laugh a little, then they went to sleep, and waked again, and laughed again, and so on.  Nancy composed several letters to her Cousin Ann dated from Beulah and explaining the sad accident that had occurred.  As she concocted these documents between her naps she could never remember in her whole life any such night of mirth and minstrelsy, and not one pang of conscience interfered, to cloud the present joy nor dim that anticipation which is even greater.

Nancy was downstairs early next morning and managed to be the one to greet the china-packers.  “We filled one barrel last evening,” she explained to them.  “Will you please head that up before you begin work?” which one of the men obligingly did.

“We’ll mark all this stuff and take it down to the station this afternoon,” said the head packer to Mrs. Carey.

“Be careful with it, won’t you?” she begged.  “We are very fond of our glass and china, our clocks and all our little treasures.”

“You won’t have any breakage so long as you deal with James Perkins & Co.!” said the packer.

Nancy went back into the room for a moment to speak with the skilful, virtuous J.P. & Co.  “There’s no need to use any care with that corner barrel,” she said carelessly.  “It has nothing of value in it!”

James Perkins went home in the middle of the afternoon and left his son to finish the work, and the son tagged and labelled and painted with all his might.  The Dirty Boy barrel in the corner, being separated from the others, looked to him especially important, so he gave particular attention to that; pasted on it one label marked “Fragile,” one “This Side Up,” two “Glass with Care,” and finding several “Perishables” in his pocket tied on a few of those, and removed the entire lot of boxes, crates, and barrels to the freight depot.