ALL day long the Osborne home had been in a state of excitement. It had been very difficult for the family to attend to its usual duties. The little girls had at first declared that they could not go to school at all; and then, being convinced that they must, it had been nearly impossible to get them ready in time. Even the baby had caught the unrest, and refused to take his long morning nap and give the seventeen-year-old sister Mary a chance to attend to the work. The explanation was that mother was coming home. She had been away a whole month, an unheard-of thing in the history of the family before this season.

The fact is, Mrs. Osborne was one of those mothers who would never have been persuaded to leave her home and her children had it not become a serious duty to do so. She had been in poor health for several months, and grandmamma had written and coaxed and urged, and at last almost commanded that she should come back to the old home and the old physician, and see if he could not help her. One terrible thing about it was, that this same physician refused to allow her to bring her baby along. “I know just how it will be,” he said, shaking his gray head and looking wise. “The baby is a strong, healthy little fellow, and a perfect tyrant as they all are, and he will be carried, and put to sleep, and fed, and petted by his mother and nobody else; he will be more positive about it than usual, being among strangers, and he will just keep her worn out. There is no use in talking, Mrs. Fuller, I know your daughter Mary of old, and I will not consent to try to help her unless she will leave that fellow at home and come away from all care for a month.”

Well, the doctor had had his way, as he nearly always did, and Mrs. Osborne, having declared that it would be utterly impossible to go away from home and leave Baby and the little girls, and only Mary to look after them all, had been gotten ready and carried to the cars. And a whole month had passed, and she, wonderfully improved, was coming home to-day. Father had driven to the depot three miles away to meet her, and the house was in commotion.

Mary, the housekeeper, nurse and mother-in-charge, had had a busy day. There were still a dozen things which she meant to have done before mother came, not the least among them being to get herself in order; for her apron was torn, her slippers were down at the heel, her hair was what her father called “frowsly,” and, in short, she did not look in the least as she meant to when the mother should put her arms around her. Then there were last things to be done all over the house, and the table to be set for the early tea-dinner which was to do honor to the traveler’s newly-found appetite. Yet, notwithstanding all this, Mary, feeling sure that the time must now be short, allowed herself to drop down into the chair which she had been dusting, draw from her pocket the mother’s last letter, whose contents she knew by heart, and glancing at it, go to studying for the dozenth time the possibility that her mother might have meant the evening train instead of the afternoon, in which case she would not be there for several hours.

“Let me see; I almost believe that is the way, after all,” she said, biting the feather end of the old quill which she had picked up somewhere in her dusting, and looking vexed and disheartened. “I am sure I don’t know how I am to keep the children from growing wild, if they have to wait three hours longer.”

Meantime, the children, in the other room, were in various stages of excitement. Helen, the older of the three, in whose charge Baby Joe was especially put, occupied herself in racing to the front gate every few minutes to see if she could not get a glimpse of her father’s horse and wagon climbing the hill; and Baby Joe, each time she went, either reached after and tumbled over something which he ought not to have touched, or tumbled down, in his eager haste to follow to the gate. In this way the room was being put into more or less disorder.

“How perfectly silly you are!” said Jessie, looking up from the book she was reading, as Helen came back panting for the third time. “Just as though racing to the gate every few minutes would bring them any quicker! and look at Joe; he has tipped the spools all out of mother’s box. A nice tangle they will be in.”

“Why didn’t you keep him from them then?” asked Helen irritably; “you are doing nothing but pore over a story book. I should think you would go and comb your hair and change your dress. Mother will not like to see you in such a tangle, I can tell you.”

“There is time enough,” said Jessie, yawning. “I can’t do anything but read a story book; it is impossible to settle to anything when mother is so near home as she must be by this time. I haven’t done a thing this afternoon; I couldn’t. I don’t see how Elsie can bend over that stupid History, just as if nothing unusual was going to happen.”

This made Elsie raise her eyes; they were pretty brown ones. She was a little girl of about ten, in a neat blue dress, and with her hair in perfect order. “I thought it would be a good plan to get my history ready for to-morrow while I was waiting,” she said, “then I will not have to study this evening, when I want to listen to mother. I should think you would like to get your examples done; and anyhow, Jessie, you ought to comb your hair; it looks like a fright.”

“I mean to, of course,” said Jessie. “I dare say there is time enough. Father can’t drive fast on such a warm afternoon; and besides, Mary said she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he should have to wait for the evening train. Wouldn’t that be just horrid! If it were not for the lovely story I am reading I couldn’t endure this waiting another minute.”

“It’s easier to wait when you are at work doing what ought to be done,” said Elsie, with the air of a philosopher.

“Oh! you are a regular Miss Prim,” said Helen, laughing, as she stooped to pick little Joe out of another piece of carefully planned mischief; “for my part, I think it is horrid to have anything that ought to be done at such a time. Joe, you little nuisance, I do wish you would go to sleep, and give me a chance to watch for mother. I hope I shall get all the things picked up and put to rights that you have upset before mother comes; she will not be charmed with the looks of the room if I don’t. However, there really must be oceans of time yet.”

“Then why did you race down to the gate every few minutes to see if they were coming?” Jessie asked.

“Oh! because I did not know what else to do,” said Helen; “I knew better, of course. Take care, Joe! There, I declare! he has done it now.”

Sure enough he had! Jerked at the table spread where Helen herself had set the inkstand, intending to put it away in a few minutes, and sent a black stream not only over his own white dress, but on the carpet as well. Mary, who still sat studying the letter, and thinking of the things which she meant to accomplish before her mother came, having by this time decided that it was entirely probable that they must wait for the evening train, heard the exclamations of dismay from the other room, and rose up to see what was the trouble; but at that instant an eager cry from Elsie: “There they come!” sounded on the ears of all. Helen gathered up the screaming Joe under one arm, and calling to Mary to look out for the ink on the carpet, ran out of one door, just as Jessie scurried out of another, eager to dash upstairs and brush her hair before her father saw her; for his last charge had been to her to see to it that she did not appear before her mother in that plight. Mary, burning with shame and disappointment over the little last things which she meant to have ready, waited to mop up the ink, while Elsie, closing the door on the disordered room, went forward to meet the beloved mother.

Myra Spafford.