It was an evening of great joy and excitement, and although it was long past the usual time when Maggie and Bessie went to bed, they could not go to sleep. At another time nurse would have ordered them to shut their eyes and not speak another word; but to-night she seemed to think it quite right and natural that they should be so very wide awake, and not only gave them an extra amount of petting and kissing, but told them stories of Uncle Ruthven's pranks when he was a boy, and of his wonderful sayings and doings, till mamma, coming up and finding this going on, was half inclined to find fault with the old woman herself. Nurse had quite forgotten that, in those days, she told Uncle Ruthven, as she now told Fred, that he was "the plague of her life," and that he "worried her heart out." Perhaps she did not really mean it with the one more than with the other.