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“O Comfort, you must wait till your hand grows to it,” said her Aunt Susan.

“Yes, of course she must,” said her Uncle Ebenezer.

“Eat your supper, and your hand will grow to it before long,” said her father, who, left to himself, would have let Comfort wear the ring.

“It wouldn’t do for you to wear that ring and lose it. It’s real gold,” said her grandmother. “Have another piece of the sweet-cake.”

But Comfort wanted no more sweet-cake. She put both hands to her face and wept, and her mother sent her promptly out of the room and to bed. Comfort lay there and sobbed, and heard her Uncle Ebenezer’s covered wagon roll out of the yard, and sobbed again. Then she fell asleep, and did not know it when her mother and grandmother came in and looked at her and kissed her.

“I’m sorry she feels so bad,” said Comfort’s mother, “but I can’t let her wear that ring.”

“No, you can’t,” said her grandmother. And they went out shading the candle.

Comfort said no more about the ring the next morning. She knew her mother too well. She did not eat much breakfast, and crept off miserably to school at a quarter past eight, and she had another unhappy day. Nobody had forgotten about the gold ring. She was teased about it at every opportunity. “Why didn’t you wear that handsome gold ring?” asked the big girl with red cheeks, until poor Comfort got nearly distracted. It seemed to her that the time to go home would never come, and as if she could never endure to go to school again. That night she begged her mother to let her stay at home the next day. “No,” said her mother; “you’ve begun to go to school, and you’re going to school unless you’re sick. Now this evening you had better sit down and write a letter to your Aunt Comfort. It’s a long time since you wrote to her.”

So Comfort sat down and wrote laboriously a letter to her Aunt Comfort, and thanked her anew, as she always did, for her gold ring and the gold dollar. “I wish to express my thanks again for the beautiful and valuable gifts which you presented me for my name,” wrote Comfort, in the little stilted style of the day.

After the letter was written it was eight o’clock, and Comfort’s mother said she had better go to bed.

“You look tired out,” said she; “I guess you’ll have to go to bed early if you’re going to school.”

“Can’t I stay home to-morrow, mother?” pleaded Comfort, with sudden hope.

“No,” said her mother; “you’ve got to go if you’re able.”

“Mother, can’t I wear it just once?”

“Don’t you bring that ring up again,” said her mother. “Take your candle and go right upstairs.”

Comfort gave a pitiful little sob.

“Now don’t you go to crying over it,” ordered her mother; and Comfort tried to choke back another sob as she went out of the room.

Comfort’s father looked up from the Old Farmer’s Almanac. He was going to Bolton the next day with a load of wood, and wanted to see what the weather would be, and so was consulting the almanac.

“What was it Comfort wanted?” he inquired.

“She wanted to wear that gold ring her Aunt Comfort gave her to school,” replied Mrs. Pease. “And I’ve told her over and over again I shouldn’t let her do it.”

“It’s a mile too big for her, and she’d be sure to lose it off,” said Grandmother Atkins; “and it would be a pity to have anything happen to it, when it’s real gold, too.”

“She couldn’t wind a rag round her finger under it, could she?” asked Comfort’s father, hesitatingly.

“Wear a rag round her finger under it!” repeated Mrs. Pease. “I rather guess she can wait till her finger grows to it. You’d let that child do anything.”

Mr. Pease did not say anything more, but studied the Old Farmer’s Almanac again, and found out it was likely to be fair weather for the season.