It was a brown, old-fashioned house such as is common in New England, with low ceilings, high windows, and small panes of glass, and in the centre a great chimney of a fashion a hundred years ago.  In the grass plot at the side, where clothes were bleached and dried, there should have been a well-sweep and curb to complete the picture, but instead there was a modern pump where an elderly woman was getting water, and throwing away three or four pails full, so that the last might be fresh and sparkling for the coffee she was to make for the early breakfast.  Above the eastern hills the sun was rising, coloring everything with a rosy tinge, and the air was full of the song which summer sings, of flowers and happy insect life, when she is at her best.  But the woman neither heard the song nor saw the sunshine, her heart was so heavy with thoughts of the parting which was so near.

“I can’t let her know how bad I feel,” she said, fighting back her tears, as she prepared the dainty breakfast which she could scarcely touch, but which her grand-daughter, Eloise, ate with the healthy appetite of youth, and then turned her attention to strapping her trunk, while her grandmother began to fill a paper box with slices of bread and butter, and whatever else she could find, and thought Eloise would like on the road.

“There, I’ve got it done at last, and hope it will hold till I get there, the old lock is so shaky,” Eloise said, rising to her feet, and shedding back from her face a mass of soft, fluffy hair.

“Please don’t put up any more lunch.  I can never eat it all,” she continued, turning to her grandmother; then, as she saw the tears dropping from the dim, old eyes, she sprang forward, and exclaimed, “Don’t cry.  You know we promised we would both be brave, and it is not so very long to Christmas.  I shall certainly be home then, and Crompton is not so very far away.”

With a catching kind of sob, the elder woman smiled upon the bright face uplifted to hers, and said:  “I didn’t mean to cry, and I am going to be brave.  I am glad you have the chance.”

“So am I,” the girl replied, her spirits rising as her grandmother’s tears were dried.  “Ever since I was engaged to go to Crompton I have felt an elation of spirits, as if something were going to come of it.  If it were not for leaving you, and I had heard from California, I should be very happy.  When a letter comes, forward it at once, and if necessary I shall go there during the holidays, and bring her home.  I am glad we have her room all ready for her.  I must see it once more.”

Running upstairs she opened the door of a large chamber, and stood for a moment inspecting it.  Everything was plain and cheap, from the pine washstand to the rag carpet on the floor; but it was cosey and home-like, and the girl who had worked in it so much, papering and painting it herself, with her grandmother’s help, and then arranging and rearranging the furniture until it suited her, thought it fine, and said to herself, “She’ll like it better than any room she ever had at the grandest hotel.  I wish she were here.  Mother’s room, good-by.”