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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13997 ***
+
+REAL FOLKS
+
+by
+
+MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY
+
+1893
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+      I. THIS WAY, AND THAT
+     II. LUCLARION
+    III. BY STORY-RAIL: TWENTY-SIX YEARS AN HOUR
+     IV. AFTERWARDS IS A LONG TIME
+      V. HOW THE NEWS CAME TO HOMESWORTH
+     VI. AND
+    VII. WAKING UP
+   VIII. EAVESDROPPING IN ASPEN STREET
+     IX. HAZEL'S INSPIRATION
+      X. COCKLES AND CRAMBO
+     XI. MORE WITCH-WORK
+    XII. CRUMBS
+   XIII. PIECES OF WORLDS
+    XIV. "SESAME; AND LILIES"
+     XV. WITH ALL ONE'S MIGHT
+    XVI. SWARMING
+   XVII. QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
+  XVIII. ALL AT ONCE
+    XIX. INSIDE
+     XX. NEIGHBORS AND NEXT OF KIN
+    XXI. THE HORSESHOE
+   XXII. MORNING GLORIES
+
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+THIS WAY, AND THAT.
+
+
+The parlor blinds were shut, and all the windows of the third-story
+rooms were shaded; but the pantry window, looking out on a long low
+shed, such as city houses have to keep their wood in and to dry
+their clothes upon, was open; and out at this window had come two
+little girls, with quiet steps and hushed voices, and carried their
+books and crickets to the very further end, establishing themselves
+there, where the shade of a tall, round fir tree, planted at the
+foot of the yard below, fell across the building of a morning.
+
+"It was prettier down on the bricks," Luclarion had told them. But
+they thought otherwise.
+
+"Luclarion doesn't know," said Frank. "People _don't_ know things, I
+think. I wonder why, when they've got old, and ought to? It's like
+the sea-shore here, I guess, only the stones are all stuck down, and
+you mustn't pick up the loose ones either."
+
+Frank touched lightly, as she spoke, the white and black and gray
+bits of gravel that covered the flat roof.
+
+"And it smells--like the pine forests!"
+
+The sun was hot and bright upon the fir branches and along the
+tar-cemented roof.
+
+"How do you know about sea-shores and pine forests?" asked Laura,
+with crushing common sense.
+
+"I don't know; but I do," said Frank.
+
+"You don't know anything but stories and pictures and one tree, and
+a little gravel, all stuck down tight."
+
+"I'm glad I've got one tree. And the rest of it,--why listen! It's
+in the _word_, Laura. _Forest_. Doesn't that sound like thousands of
+them, all fresh and rustling? And Ellen went to the sea-shore, in
+that book; and picked up pebbles; and the sea came up to her feet,
+just as the air comes up here, and you can't get any farther,"--said
+Frank, walking to the very edge and putting one foot out over, while
+the wind blew in her face up the long opening between rows of brick
+houses of which theirs was in the midst upon one side.
+
+"A great sea!" exclaimed Laura, contemptuously. "With all those
+other wood-sheds right out in it, all the way down!"
+
+"Well, there's another side to the sea; and capes, and islands,"
+answered Frank, turning back. "Besides, I don't pretend it _is_; I
+only think it seems a little bit like it. I'm often put in mind of
+things. I don't know why."
+
+"I'll tell you what it is like," said Laura. "It's like the gallery
+at church, where the singers stand up in a row, and look down, and
+all the people look up at them. I like high places. I like Cecilia,
+in the 'Bracelets,' sitting at the top, behind, when her name was
+called out for the prize; and 'they all made way, and she was on the
+floor in an instant.' I should like to have been Cecilia!"
+
+"Leonora was a great deal the best."
+
+"I know it; but she don't _stand out_."
+
+"Laura! You're just like the Pharisees! You're always wishing for
+long clothes and high seats!"
+
+"There ain't any Pharisees, nowadays," said Laura, securely. After
+which, of course, there was nothing more to be insisted.
+
+Mrs. Lake, the housekeeper, came to the middle upper window, and
+moved the blind a little. Frank and Laura were behind the fir. They
+saw her through the branches. She, through the farther thickness of
+the tree, did not notice them.
+
+"That was good," said Laura. "She would have beckoned us in. I hate
+that forefinger of hers; it's always hushing or beckoning. It's only
+two inches long. What makes us have to mind it so?"
+
+"She puts it all into those two inches," answered Frank. "All the
+_must_ there is in the house. And then you've got to."
+
+"I wouldn't--if father wasn't sick."
+
+"Laura," said Frank, gravely, "I don't believe father is going to
+get well. What do you suppose they're letting us stay at home from
+school for?"
+
+"O, that," said Laura, "was because Mrs. Lake didn't have time to
+sew the sleeves into your brown dress."
+
+"I could have worn my gingham, Laura. What if he should die pretty
+soon? I heard her tell Luclarion that there must be a change before
+long. They talk in little bits, Laura, and they say it solemn."
+
+The children were silent for a few minutes. Frank sat looking
+through the fir-tree at the far-off flecks of blue.
+
+Mr. Shiere had been ill a long time. They could hardly think, now,
+what it would seem again not to have a sick father; and they had had
+no mother for several years,--many out of their short remembrance of
+life. Mrs. Lake had kept the house, and mended their clothes, and
+held up her forefinger at them. Even when Mr. Shiere was well, he
+had been a reserved man, much absorbed in business since his wife's
+death, he had been a very sad man. He loved his children, but he was
+very little with them. Frank and Laura could not feel the shock and
+loss that children feel when death comes and robs them suddenly of a
+close companionship.
+
+"What do you suppose would happen then?" asked Laura, after awhile.
+"We shouldn't be anybody's children."
+
+"Yes, we should," said Frank; "we should be God's.'
+
+"Everybody else is that,--_besides_," said Laura.
+
+"We shall have black silk pantalets again, I suppose,"--she began,
+afresh, looking down at her white ones with double crimped
+ruffles,--"and Mrs. Gibbs will come in and help, and we shall have
+to pipe and overcast."
+
+"O, Laura, how nice it was ever so long ago!" cried Frank, suddenly,
+never heeding the pantalets, "when mother sent us out to ask company
+to tea,--that pleasant Saturday, you know,--and made lace pelerines
+for our dolls while we were gone! It's horrid, when other girls have
+mothers, only to have a _housekeeper_! And pretty soon we sha'n't
+have anything, only a little corner, away back, that we can't hardly
+recollect."
+
+"They'll do something with us; they always do," said Laura,
+composedly.
+
+The children of this world, even _as_ children, are wisest in their
+generation. Frank believed they would be God's children; she could
+not see exactly what was to come of that, though, practically. Laura
+knew that people always did something; something would be sure to
+be done with them. She was not frightened; she was even a little
+curious.
+
+A head came up at the corner of the shed behind them, a pair of
+shoulders,--high, square, turned forward; a pair of arms, long
+thence to the elbows, as they say women's are who might be good
+nurses of children; the hands held on to the sides of the steep
+steps that led up from the bricked yard. The young woman's face was
+thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out,
+like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never
+wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it
+struck full upon whatever was there; it struck _through_ many things
+that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white,
+strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed
+easily when she spoke, but the lips closed over them absolutely and
+firmly. Yet they were pleasant lips, and had a smile in them that
+never went quite out; it lay in all the muscles of the mouth and
+chin; it lay behind, in the living spirit that had moulded to itself
+the muscles.
+
+This was Luclarion.
+
+"Your Aunt Oldways and Mrs. Oferr have come. Hurry in!"
+
+Now Mrs. Oldways was only an uncle's wife; Mrs. Oferr was their
+father's sister. But Mrs. Oferr was a rich woman who lived in New
+York, and who came on grand and potent, with a scarf or a pair of
+shoe-bows for each of the children in her big trunk, and a hundred
+and one suggestions for their ordering and behavior at her tongue's
+end, once a year. Mrs. Oldways lived up in the country, and was
+"aunt" to half the neighborhood at home, and turned into an aunt
+instantly, wherever she went and found children. If there were no
+children, perhaps older folks did not call her by the name, but they
+felt the special human kinship that is of no-blood or law, but is
+next to motherhood in the spirit.
+
+Mrs. Oferr found the open pantry window, before the children had
+got in.
+
+"Out there!" she exclaimed, "in the eyes of all the neighbors in the
+circumstances of the family! Who does, or _don't_ look after you?"
+
+"Hearts'-sake!" came up the pleasant tones of Mrs. Oldways from
+behind, "how can they help it? There isn't any other out-doors. If
+they were down at Homesworth now, there'd be the lilac garden and
+the old chestnuts, and the seat under the wall. Poor little souls!"
+she added, pitifully, as she lifted them in, and kissed them. "It's
+well they can take any comfort. Let 'em have all there is."
+
+Mrs. Oferr drew the blinds, and closed the window.
+
+Frank and Laura remembered the strangeness of that day all their
+lives. How they sat, shy and silent, while Luclarion brought in cake
+and wine; how Mrs. Oferr sat in the large morocco easy-chair and
+took some; and Mrs. Oldways lifted Laura, great girl as she was,
+into her lap first, and broke a slice for her; how Mrs. Oldways went
+up-stairs to Mrs. Lake, and then down into the kitchen to do
+something that was needed; and Mrs. Oferr, after she had visited her
+brother, lay down in the spare chamber for a nap, tired with her
+long journey from New York, though it had been by boat and cars,
+while there was a long staging from Homesworth down to Nashua, on
+Mrs. Oldways' route. Mrs. Oldways, however, was "used," she said,
+"to stepping round." It was the sitting that had tired her.
+
+How they were told not to go out any more, or to run up and
+down-stairs; and how they sat in the front windows, looking out
+through the green slats at so much of the street world as they could
+see in strips; how they obtained surreptitious bits of bread from
+dinner, and opened a bit of the sash, and shoved out crumbs under
+the blinds for the pigeons that flew down upon the sidewalk; how
+they wondered what kind of a day it was in other houses, where there
+were not circumstances in the family, where children played, and
+fathers were not ill, but came and went to and from their stores;
+and where two aunts had not come, both at once, from great ways off,
+to wait for something strange and awful that was likely to befall.
+
+When they were taken in, at bedtime, to kiss their father and say
+good-night, there was something portentous in the stillness there;
+in the look of the sick man, raised high against the pillows, and
+turning his eyes wistfully toward them, with no slightest movement
+of the head; in the waiting aspect of all things,--the appearance as
+of everybody being to sit up all night except themselves.
+
+Edward Shiere brought his children close to him with the magnetism
+of that look; they bent down to receive his kiss and his good-night,
+so long and solemn. He had not been in the way of talking to them
+about religion in his life. He had only insisted on their truth and
+obedience; that was the beginning of all religion. Now it was given
+him in the hour of his death what he should speak; and because he
+had never said many such words to them before, they fell like the
+very touch of the Holy Ghost upon their young spirits now,--
+
+"Love God, and keep His commandments. Good-by."
+
+In the morning, when they woke, Mrs. Lake was in their room, talking
+in a low voice with Mrs. Oferr, who stood by an open bureau. They
+heard Luclarion dusting down the stairs.
+
+Who was taking care of their father?
+
+They did not ask. In the night, he had been taken care of. It was
+morning with him, now, also.
+
+Mrs. Lake and Mrs. Oferr were calculating,--about black pantalets,
+and other things.
+
+This story is not with the details of their early orphan life. When
+Edward Shiere was buried came family consultations. The two aunts
+were the nearest friends. Nobody thought of Mr. Titus Oldways. He
+never was counted. He was Mrs. Shiere's uncle,--Aunt Oldways'
+uncle-in-law, therefore, and grand-uncle to these children. But
+Titus Oldways never took up any family responsibilities; he had been
+shy of them all his single, solitary life. He seemed to think he
+could not drop them as he could other things, if he did not find
+them satisfactory. Besides, what would he know about two young
+girls?
+
+He saw the death in the paper, and came to the funeral; then he went
+away again to his house in Greenley Street at the far West End, and
+to his stiff old housekeeper, Mrs. Froke, who knew his stiff old
+ways. And, turning his back on everybody, everybody forgot all about
+him. Except as now and then, at intervals of years, there broke out
+here or there, at some distant point in some family crisis, a sudden
+recollection from which would spring a half suggestion, "Why,
+there's Uncle Titus! If he was only,"--or, "if he would only,"--and
+there it ended. Much as it might be with a housewife, who says of
+some stored-away possession forty times, perhaps, before it ever
+turns out available, "Why, there's that old gray taffety! If it were
+only green, now!" or, "If there were three or four yards more of
+it!"
+
+Uncle Titus was just Uncle Titus, neither more nor less; so Mrs.
+Oferr and Aunt Oldways consulted about their own measures and
+materials; and never reckoned the old taffety at all. There was
+money enough to clothe and educate; little more.
+
+"I will take home _one_," said Mrs. Oferr, distinctly.
+
+So, they were to be separated?
+
+They did not realize what this was, however. They were told of
+letters and visits; of sweet country-living, of city sights and
+pleasures; of kittens and birds' nests, and the great barns; of
+music and dancing lessons, and little parties,--"by-and-by, when it
+was proper."
+
+"Let me go to Homesworth," whispered Frank to Aunt Oldways.
+
+Laura gravitated as surely to the streets and shops, and the great
+school of young ladies.
+
+"One taken and the other left," quoted Luclarion, over the packing
+of the two small trunks.
+
+"We're both going," says Laura, surprised. "_One_ taken? Where?"
+
+"Where the carcass is," answered Luclarion.
+
+"There's one thing you'll have to see to for yourselves. I can't
+pack it. It won't go into the trunks."
+
+"What, Luclarion?"
+
+"What your father said to you that night."
+
+They were silent. Presently Frank answered, softly,--"I hope I
+shan't forget that."
+
+Laura, the pause once broken, remarked, rather glibly, that she "was
+afraid there wouldn't be much chance to recollect things at Aunt
+Oferr's."
+
+"She isn't exactly what I call a heavenly-minded woman," said
+Luclarion, quietly.
+
+"She is very much _occupied_," replied Laura, grandly taking up the
+Oferr style. "She visits a great deal, and she goes out in the
+carriage. You have to change your dress every day for dinner, and
+I'm to take French lessons."
+
+The absurd little sinner was actually proud of her magnificent
+temptations. She was only a child. Men and women never are, of
+course.
+
+"I'm afraid it will be pretty hard to remember," repeated Laura,
+with condescension.
+
+"_That's_ your stump!"
+
+Luclarion fixed the steadfast arrow of her look straight upon her,
+and drew the bow with this twang.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+LUCLARION.
+
+
+How Mrs. Grapp ever came to, was the wonder. Her having the baby was
+nothing. Her having the name for it was the astonishment.
+
+Her own name was Lucy; her husband's Luther: that, perhaps,
+accounted for the first syllable; afterwards, whether her mind
+lapsed off into combinations of such outshining appellatives as
+"Clara" and "Marion," or whether Mr. Grapp having played the
+clarionet, and wooed her sweetly with it in her youth, had anything
+to do with it, cannot be told; but in those prescriptive days of
+quiet which followed the domestic advent, the name did somehow grow
+together in the fancy of Mrs. Luther; and in due time the life-atom
+which had been born indistinguishable into the natural world, was
+baptized into the Christian Church as "Luclarion" Grapp.
+Thenceforth, and no wonder, it took to itself a very especial
+individuality, and became what this story will partly tell.
+
+Marcus Grapp, who had the start of Luclarion in this "meander,"--as
+their father called the vale of tears,--by just two years' time, and
+was y-_clipped_, by everybody but his mother "Mark,"--in his turn,
+as they grew old together, cut his sister down to "Luke." Then
+Luther Grapp called them both "The Apostles." And not far wrong;
+since if ever the kingdom of heaven does send forth its
+Apostles--nay, its little Christs--into the work on earth, in these
+days, it is as little children into loving homes.
+
+The Apostles got up early one autumn morning, when Mark was about
+six years old, and Luke four. They crept out of their small
+trundle-bed in their mother's room adjoining the great kitchen, and
+made their way out softly to the warm wide hearth.
+
+There were new shoes, a pair apiece, brought home from the Mills the
+night before, set under the little crickets in the corners. These
+had got into their dreams, somehow, and into the red rooster's first
+halloo from the end room roof, and into the streak of pale daylight
+that just stirred and lifted the darkness, and showed doors and
+windows, but not yet the blue meeting-houses on the yellow
+wall-paper, by which they always knew when it was really morning;
+and while Mrs. Grapp was taking that last beguiling nap in which one
+is conscious that one means to get up presently, and rests so
+sweetly on one's good intentions, letting the hazy mirage of the
+day's work that is to be done play along the horizon of dim thoughts
+with its unrisen activities,--two little flannel night-gowns were
+cuddled in small heaps by the chimney-side, little bare feet were
+trying themselves into the new shoes, and lifting themselves up,
+crippled with two inches of stout string between the heels.
+
+Then the shoes were turned into spans of horses, and chirruped and
+trotted softly into their cricket-stables; and then--what else was
+there to do, until the strings were cut, and the flannel night-gowns
+taken off?
+
+It was so still out here, in the big, busy, day-time room; it was
+like getting back where the world had not begun; surely one must do
+something wonderful with the materials all lying round, and such an
+opportunity as that.
+
+It was old-time then, when kitchens had fire-places; or rather the
+house was chiefly fire-place, in front of and about which was more
+or less of kitchen-space. In the deep fire-place lay a huge mound of
+gray ashes, a Vesuvius, under which red bowels of fire lay hidden.
+In one corner of the chimney leaned an iron bar, used sometimes in
+some forgotten, old fashioned way, across dogs or pothooks,--who
+knows now? At any rate, there it always was.
+
+Mark, ambitious, put all his little strength to it this morning and
+drew it down, carefully, without much clatter, on the hearth. Then
+he thought how it would turn red under those ashes, where the big
+coals were, and how it would shine and sparkle when he pulled it out
+again, like the red-hot, hissing iron Jack-the-Giant-Killer struck
+into the one-eyed monster's eye. So he shoved it in; and forgot it
+there, while he told Luke--very much twisted and dislocated, and
+misjoined--the leading incidents of the giant story; and then lapsed
+off, by some queer association, into the Scripture narrative of
+Joseph and his brethren, who "pulled his red coat off, and put him
+in a _fit_, and left him there."
+
+"And then what?" says Luke.
+
+"Then,--O, my iron's done! See here, Luke!"--and taking it prudently
+with the tongs, he pulled back the rod, till the glowing end, a foot
+or more of live, palpitating, flamy red, lay out upon the broad open
+bricks.
+
+"There, Luke! You daresn't put your foot on _that_!"
+
+Dear little Luke, who wouldn't, at even four years old, be dared!
+
+And dear little white, tender, pink-and-lily foot!
+
+The next instant, a shriek of pain shot through Mrs. Grapp's ears,
+and sent her out of her dreams and out of her bed, and with one
+single impulse into the kitchen, with her own bare feet, and in her
+night-gown.
+
+The little foot had only touched; a dainty, timid, yet most
+resolute touch; but the sweet flesh shriveled, and the fierce
+anguish ran up every fibre of the baby body, to the very heart and
+brain.
+
+"O! O, O!" came the long, pitiful, shivering cries, as the mother
+gathered her in her arms.
+
+"What is it? What did you do? How came you to?" And all the while
+she moved quickly here and there, to cupboard and press-drawer,
+holding the child fast, and picking up as she could with one hand,
+cotton wool, and sweet-oil flask, and old linen bits; and so she
+bound it up, saying still, every now and again, as all she could
+say,--"What _did_ you do? How came you to?"
+
+Till, in a little lull of the fearful smart, as the air was shut
+away, and the oil felt momentarily cool upon the ache, Luke answered
+her,--
+
+"He hed I dare-hn't, and ho I did!"
+
+"You little fool!"
+
+The rough word was half reaction of relief, that the child could
+speak at all, half horrible spasm of all her own motherly nerves
+that thrilled through and through with every pang that touched the
+little frame, hers also. Mothers never do part bonds with babies
+they have borne. Until the day they die, each quiver of their life
+goes back straight to the heart beside which it began.
+
+"You Marcus! What did you mean?"
+
+"I meant she darsn't; and she no business to 'a dars't," said Mark,
+pale with remorse and fright, but standing up stiff and manful, with
+bare common sense, when brought to bay. And then he marched away
+into his mother's bedroom, plunged his head down into the clothes,
+and cried,--harder than Luclarion.
+
+Nobody wore any new shoes that day; Mark for a punishment,--though
+he flouted at the penalty as such, with an, "I guess you'd see me!"
+And there were many days before poor little Luclarion could wear any
+shoes at all.
+
+The foot got well, however, without hindrance. But Luke was the same
+little fool as ever; that was not burnt out. She would never be
+"dared" to anything.
+
+They called it "stumps" as they grew older. They played "stumps" all
+through the barns and woods and meadows; over walls and rocks, and
+rafters and house-roofs. But the burnt foot saved Luke's neck scores
+of times, doubtless. Mark remembered it; he never "stumped" her to
+any certain hurt, or where he could not lead the way himself.
+
+The mischief they got into and out of is no part of my story; but
+one day something happened--things do happen as far back in lives as
+that--which gave Luclarion her clew to the world.
+
+They had got into the best parlor,--that sacred place of the New
+England farm-house, that is only entered by the high-priests
+themselves on solemn festivals, weddings and burials, Thanksgivings
+and quiltings; or devoutly, now and then to set the shrine in order,
+shut the blinds again, and so depart, leaving it to gather the gloom
+and grandeur that things and places and people do when they are good
+for nothing else.
+
+The children had been left alone; for their mother had gone to a
+sewing society, and Grashy, the girl, was up-stairs in her
+kitchen-chamber-bedroom, with a nail over the door-latch to keep
+them out while she "fixed over" her best gown.
+
+"Le's play Lake Ontario," says Marcus.
+
+Now Lake Ontario, however they had pitched upon it, stood with them
+for all the waters that are upon the face of the earth, and all the
+confusion and peril of them. To play it, they turned the room into
+one vast shipwreck, of upset and piled up chairs, stools, boxes,
+buckets, and what else they could lay hands on; and among and over
+them they navigated their difficult and hilarious way. By no means
+were they to touch the floor; that was the Lake,--that were to
+drown.
+
+It was Columbus sometimes; sometimes it was Captain Cook; to-day, it
+was no less than Jason sailing after the golden fleece.
+
+Out of odd volumes in the garret, and out of "best books" taken down
+from the secretary in the "settin'-room," and put into their hands,
+with charges, of a Sunday, to keep them still, they had got these
+things, jumbled into strange far-off and near fantasies in their
+childish minds. "Lake Ontario" included and connected all.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," said Marcus, tumbling up against the
+parlor door and an idea at once. "In here!"
+
+"What?" asked Luke, breathless, without looking up, and paddling
+with the shovel, from an inverted rocking-chair.
+
+"The golden thing! Hush!"
+
+At this moment Grashy came into the kitchen, took a little tin
+kettle from a nail over the dresser, and her sun-bonnet from another
+behind the door, and made her way through the apartment as well as
+she could for bristling chair-legs, with exemplary placidity. She
+was used to "Lake Ontario."
+
+"Don't get into any mischief, you Apostles," was her injunction.
+"I'm goin' down to Miss Ruddock's for some 'east."
+
+"Good,"; says Mark, the instant the door was shut "Now this is
+Colchis, and I'm going in."
+
+He pronounced it much like "cold-cheese," and it never occurred to
+him that he was naming any unusual or ancient locality. There was a
+"Jason" in the Mills Village. He kept a grocer's shop. Colchis might
+be close by for all he knew; out beyond the wall, perhaps, among the
+old barrels. Children _place_ all they read or hear about, or even
+all they imagine, within a very limited horizon. They cannot go
+beyond their world. Why should they? Neither could those very
+venerable ancients.
+
+"'Tain't," says Luclarion, with unbeguiled practicality. "It's just
+ma's best parlor, and you mustn't."
+
+It was the "mustn't" that was the whole of it. If Mark had asserted
+that the back kitchen, or the cellar-way closet was Colchis, she
+would have indorsed it with enthusiasm, and followed on like a loyal
+Argonaut, as she was. But her imagination here was prepossessed.
+Nothing in old fable could be more environed with awe and mystery
+than this best parlor.
+
+"And, besides," said Luclarion, "I don't care for the golden
+fleece; I'm tired of it. Let's play something else."
+
+"I'll tell you what there is in here," persisted Mark. "There's two
+enchanted children. I've seen 'em!"
+
+"Just as though," said Luke contemptuously. "Ma ain't a witch."
+
+"Tain't ma. She don't know. They ain't visible to her. _She_ thinks
+it's nothing but the best parlor. But it opens out, right into the
+witch country,--not for her. 'Twill if we go. See if it don't."
+
+He had got hold of her now; Luclarion could not resist that.
+Anything might be true of that wonderful best room, after all. It
+was the farthest Euxine, the witch-land, everything, to them.
+
+So Mark turned the latch and they crept in
+
+"We must open a shutter," Mark said, groping his way.
+
+"Grashy will be back," suggested Luke, fearfully.
+
+"Guess so!" said Mark. "She ain't got coaxed to take her sun-bonnet
+off yet, an' it'll take her ninety-'leven hours to get it on again."
+
+He had let in the light now from the south window.
+
+The red carpet on the floor; the high sofa of figured hair-cloth,
+with brass-headed nails, and brass rosettes in the ends of the hard,
+cylinder pillows; the tall, carved cupboard press, its doors and
+drawers glittering with hanging brass handles; right opposite the
+door by which they had come in, the large, leaning mirror,
+gilt--garnished with grooved and beaded rim and an eagle and
+ball-chains over the top,--all this, opening right in from the
+familiar every-day kitchen and their Lake Ontario,--it certainly
+meant something that such a place should be. It meant a great deal
+more than sixteen feet square could hold, and what it really was did
+not stop short at the gray-and-crimson stenciled walls.
+
+The two were all alone in it; perhaps they had never been all alone
+in it before. I think, notwithstanding their mischief and
+enterprise, they never had.
+
+And deep in the mirror, face to face with them, coming down, it
+seemed, the red slant of an inner and more brilliant floor, they saw
+two other little figures. Their own they knew, really, but elsewhere
+they never saw their own figures entire. There was not another
+looking-glass in the house that was more than two feet long, and
+they were all hung up so high!
+
+"There!" whispered Mark. "There they are, and they can't get out."
+
+"Of course they can't," said sensible Luclarion.
+
+"If we only knew the right thing to say, or do, they might," said
+Mark. "It's that they're waiting for, you see. They always do. It's
+like the sleeping beauty Grashy told us."
+
+"Then they've got to wait a hundred years," said Luke.
+
+"Who knows when they began?"
+
+"They do everything that we do," said Luclarion, her imagination
+kindling, but as under protest. "If we could jump in perhaps they
+would jump out."
+
+"We might jump _at_ 'em," said Marcus. "Jest get 'em going, and
+may-be they'd jump over. Le's try."
+
+So they set up two chairs from Lake Ontario in the kitchen doorway,
+to jump from; but they could only jump to the middle round of the
+carpet, and who could expect that the shadow children should be
+beguiled by that into a leap over bounds? They only came to the
+middle round of _their_ carpet.
+
+"We must go nearer; we must set the chairs in the middle, and jump
+close. Jest _shave_, you know," said Marcus.
+
+"O, I'm afraid," said Luclarion.
+
+"I'll tell you what! Le's _run_ and jump! Clear from the other side
+of the kitchen, you know. Then they'll have to run too, and may-be
+they can't stop."
+
+So they picked up chairs and made a path, and ran from across the
+broad kitchen into the parlor doorway, quite on to the middle round
+of the carpet, and then with great leaps came down bodily upon the
+floor close in front of the large glass that, leaned over them, with
+two little fallen figures in it, rolling aside quickly also, over
+the slanting red carpet.
+
+But, O dear what did it?
+
+Had the time come, anyhow, for the old string to part its last
+fibre, that held the mirror tilting from the wall,--or was it the
+crash of a completed spell?
+
+There came a snap,--a strain,--as some nails or screws that held it
+otherwise gave way before the forward pressing weight, and down,
+flat-face upon the floor, between the children, covering them with
+fragments of splintered glass and gilded wood,--eagle, ball-chains,
+and all,--that whole magnificence and mystery lay prostrate.
+
+Behind, where it had been, was a blank, brown-stained cobwebbed
+wall, thrown up harsh and sudden against them, making the room
+small, and all the enchanted chamber, with its red slanting carpet,
+and its far reflected corners, gone.
+
+The house hushed up again after that terrible noise, and stood just
+the same as ever. When a thing like that happens, it tells its own
+story, just once, and then it is over. _People_ are different. They
+keep talking.
+
+There was Grashy to come home. She had not got there in time to hear
+the house tell it. She must learn it from the children. Why?
+
+"Because they knew," Luclarion said. "Because, then, they could not
+wait and let it be found out."
+
+"We never touched it," said Mark.
+
+"We jumped," said Luke.
+
+"We couldn't help it, if _that_ did it. S'posin' we'd jumped in the
+kitchen, or--the--flat-irons had tumbled down,--or anything? That
+old string was all wore out."
+
+"Well, we was here, and we jumped; and we know."
+
+"We was here, of course; and of course we couldn't help knowing,
+with all that slam-bang. Why, it almost upset Lake Ontario! We can
+tell how it slammed, and how we thought the house was coming down. I
+did."
+
+"And how we were in the best parlor, and how we jumped," reiterated
+Luclarion, slowly. "Marcus, it's a stump!"
+
+They were out in the middle of Lake Ontario now, sitting right down
+underneath the wrecks, upon the floor; that is, under water, without
+ever thinking of it. The parlor door was shut, with all that
+disaster and dismay behind it.
+
+"Go ahead, then!" said Marcus, and he laid himself back desperately
+on the floor. "There's Grashy!"
+
+"Sakes and patience!" ejaculated Grashy, merrily, coming in.
+"They're drownded,--dead, both of 'em; down to the bottom of Lake
+Ontariah!"
+
+"No we ain't," said Luclarion, quietly. "It isn't Lake Ontario now.
+It's nothing but a clutter. But there's an awful thing in the best
+parlor, and we don't know whether we did it or not. We were in
+there, and we jumped."
+
+Grashy went straight to the parlor door, and opened it. She looked
+in, turned pale, and said "'Lection!"
+
+That is a word the women have, up in the country, for solemn
+surprise, or exceeding emergency, or dire confusion. I do not know
+whether it is derived from religion or politics. It denotes a vital
+crisis, either way, and your hands full. Perhaps it had the
+theological association in Grashy's mind, for the next thing she
+said was, "My soul!"
+
+"Do you know what that's a sign of, you children?"
+
+"Sign the old thing was rotten," said Marcus, rather sullenly.
+
+"Wish that was all," said Grashy, her lips white yet. "Hope there
+mayn't nothin' dreadful happen in this house before the year's out.
+It's wuss'n thirteen at the table."
+
+"Do you s'pose we did it?" asked Luke, anxiously.
+
+"Where was you when it tumbled?"
+
+"Right in front of it. But we were rolling away. _We_ tumbled."
+
+"'Twould er come down the fust jar, anyway, if a door had slammed.
+The string's cut right through," said Grashy, looking at the two
+ends sticking up stiff and straight from the top fragment of the
+frame. "But the mercy is you war'n't smashed yourselves to bits and
+flinders. Think o'that!"
+
+"Do you s'pose ma'll think of that?" asked Luclarion.
+
+"Well--yes; but it may make her kinder madder,--just at first, you
+know. Between you and me and the lookin'-glass, you see,--well, yer
+ma is a pretty strong-feelin' woman," said Grashy, reflectively.
+"'Fi was you I wouldn't say nothin' about it. What's the use? _I_
+shan't."
+
+"It's a stump," repeated Luclarion, sadly, but in very resolute
+earnest.
+
+Grashy stared.
+
+"Well, if you ain't the curiousest young one, Luke Grapp!" said she,
+only half comprehending.
+
+When Mrs. Grapp came home, Luclarion went into her bedroom after
+her, and told her the whole story. Mrs. Grapp went into the parlor,
+viewed the scene of calamity, took in the sense of loss and narrowly
+escaped danger, laid the whole weight of them upon the disobedience
+to be dealt with, and just as she had said, "You little fool!" out
+of the very shock of her own distress when Luke had burned her baby
+foot, she turned back now, took the two children up-stairs in
+silence, gave them each a good old orthodox whipping, and tucked
+them into their beds.
+
+They slept one on each side of the great kitchen-chamber.
+
+"Mark," whispered Luke, tenderly, after Mrs. Grapp's step had died
+away down the stairs. "How do you feel?"
+
+"Hot!" said Mark. "How do you?"
+
+"You ain't mad with me, be you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Then I feel real cleared up and comfortable. But it _was_ a stump,
+wasn't it?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that time forward, Luclarion Grapp had got her light to go by.
+She understood life. It was "stumps" all through. The Lord set them,
+and let them; she found that out afterward, when she was older, and
+"experienced religion." I think she was mistaken in the dates,
+though; it was _recognition_, this later thing; the experience was
+away back,--at Lake Ontario.
+
+It was a stump when her father died, and her mother had to manage
+the farm, and she to help her. The mortgage they had to work off was
+a stump; but faith and Luclarion's dairy did it. It was a stump when
+Marcus wanted to go to college, and they undertook that, after the
+mortgage. It was a stump when Adam Burge wanted her to marry him,
+and go and live in the long red cottage at Side Hill, and she could
+not go till they had got through with helping Marcus. It was a
+terrible stump when Adam Burge married Persis Cone instead, and she
+had to live on and bear it. It was a stump when her mother died, and
+the farm was sold.
+
+Marcus married; he never knew; he had a belles-lettres professorship
+in a new college up in D----. He would not take a cent of the farm
+money; he had had his share long ago; the four thousand dollars
+were invested for Luke. He did the best he could, and all he knew;
+but human creatures can never pay each other back. Only God can do
+that, either way.
+
+Luclarion did not stay in ----. There were too few there now, and
+too many. She came down to Boston. Her two hundred and eighty
+dollars a year was very good, as far as it went, but it would not
+keep her idle; neither did she wish to live idle. She learned
+dress-making; she had taste and knack; she was doing well; she
+enjoyed going about from house to house for her days' work, and then
+coming back to her snug room at night, and her cup of tea and her
+book.
+
+Then it turned out that so much sewing was not good for her; her
+health was threatened; she had been used to farm work and "all
+out-doors." It was a "stump" again. That was all she called it; she
+did not talk piously about a "cross." What difference did it make?
+There is another word, also, for "cross" in Hebrew.
+
+Luclarion came at last to live with Mrs. Edward Shiere. And in that
+household, at eight and twenty, we have just found her.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+BY STORY-RAIL: TWENTY-SIX YEARS AN HOUR.
+
+
+Laura Shiere did not think much about the "stump," when, in her dark
+gray merino travelling dress, and her black ribbons, nicely
+appointed, as Mrs. Oferr's niece should be, down to her black kid
+gloves and broad-hemmed pocket-handkerchief, and little black straw
+travelling-basket (for morocco bags were not yet in those days), she
+stepped into the train with her aunt at the Providence Station, on
+her way to Stonington and New York.
+
+The world seemed easily laid out before her. She was like a cousin
+in a story-book, going to arrive presently at a new home, and begin
+a new life, in which she would be very interesting to herself and to
+those about her. She felt rather important, too, with her money
+independence--there being really "property" of hers to be spoken of
+as she had heard it of late. She had her mother's diamond ring on
+her third finger, and was comfortably conscious of it when she drew
+off her left-hand glove. Laura Shiere's nature had only been
+stirred, as yet, a very little below the surface, and the surface
+rippled pleasantly in the sunlight that was breaking forth from the
+brief clouds.
+
+Among the disreputable and vociferous crowd of New York hack
+drivers, that swarmed upon the pier as the _Massachusetts_ glided
+into her dock, it was good to see that subduedly respectable and
+consciously private and superior man in the drab overcoat and the
+nice gloves and boots, who came forward and touched his hat to Mrs.
+Oferr, took her shawl and basket, and led the way, among the
+aggravated public menials, to a handsome private carriage waiting on
+the street.
+
+"All well at home, David?" asked Mrs. Oferr.
+
+"All well, ma'am, thank you," replied David.
+
+And another man sat upon the box, in another drab coat, and touched
+_his_ hat; and when they reached Waverley Place and alighted, Mrs.
+Oferr had something to say to him of certain directions, and
+addressed him as "Moses."
+
+It was very grand and wonderful to order "David" and "Moses" about.
+Laura felt as if her aunt were something only a little less than
+"Michael with the sword." Laura had a susceptibility for dignities;
+she appreciated, as we have seen out upon the wood-shed, "high
+places, and all the people looking up."
+
+David and Moses were brothers, she found out; she supposed that was
+the reason they dressed alike, in drab coats; as she and Frank used
+to wear their red merinos, and their blue ginghams. A little spasm
+did come up in her throat for a minute, as she thought of the old
+frocks and the old times already dropped so far behind; but Alice
+and Geraldine Oferr met her the next instant on the broad staircase
+at the back of the marble-paved hall, looking slight and delicate,
+and princess-like, in the grand space built about them for their
+lives to move in; and in the distance and magnificence of it all,
+the faint little momentary image of Frank faded away.
+
+She went up with them out of the great square hall, over the stately
+staircase, past the open doors of drawing-rooms and library,
+stretching back in a long suite, with the conservatory gleaming
+green from the far end over the garden, up the second stairway to
+the floor where their rooms were; bedrooms and nursery,--this last
+called so still, though the great, airy front-room was the place
+used now for their books and amusements as growing young
+ladies,--all leading one into another around the skylighted upper
+hall, into which the sunshine came streaked with amber and violet
+from the richly colored glass. She had a little side apartment given
+to her for her own, with a recessed window, in which were blossoming
+plants just set there from the conservatory; opposite stood a white,
+low bed in a curtained alcove, and beyond was a dressing-closet.
+Laura thought she should not be able to sleep there at all for a
+night or two, for the beauty of it and the good time she should be
+having.
+
+At that same moment Frank and her Aunt Oldways were getting down
+from the stage that had brought them over from Ipsley, where they
+slept after their day's journey from Boston,--at the doorstone of
+the low, broad-roofed, wide-built, roomy old farm-house in
+Homesworth.
+
+Right in the edge of the town it stood, its fields stretching over
+the south slope of green hills in sunny uplands, and down in meadowy
+richness to the wild, hidden, sequestered river-side, where the
+brown water ran through a narrow, rocky valley,--Swift River they
+called it. There are a great many Swift Rivers in New England. It
+was only a vehement little tributary of a larger stream, beside
+which lay larger towns; it was doing no work for the world,
+apparently, at present; there were no mills, except a little
+grist-mill to which the farmers brought their corn, cuddled among
+the rocks and wild birches and alders, at a turn where the road came
+down, and half a dozen planks made a bit of a bridge.
+
+"O, what beautiful places!" cried Frank, as they crossed the little
+bridge, and glanced either way into a green, gray, silvery vista of
+shrubs and rocks, and rushing water, with the white spires of
+meadow-sweet and the pink hardback, and the first bright plumes of
+the golden rod nodding and shining against the shade,--as they
+passed the head of a narrow, grassy lane, trod by cows' feet, and
+smelling of their milky breaths, and the sweetness of hay-barns,--as
+they came up, at length, over the long slope of turf that carpeted
+the way, as for a bride's feet, from the roadside to the very
+threshold. She looked along the low, treble-piled garden wall, too,
+and out to the open sheds, deep with pine chips; and upon the broad
+brown house-roof, with its long, gradual decline, till its eaves
+were within reach of a child's fingers from the ground; and her
+quick eye took in facilities.
+
+"O, if Laura could see this! After the old shed-top in Brier Street,
+and the one tree!"
+
+But Laura had got what the shed-top stood for with her; it was
+Frank who had hearkened to whole forests in the stir of the one
+brick-rooted fir. To that which each child had, it was already
+given.
+
+In a week or two Frank wrote Laura a letter. It was an old-fashioned
+letter, you know; a big sheet, written close, four pages,
+all but the middle of the last page, which was left for the
+"superscription." Then it was folded, the first leaf turned down
+twice, lengthwise; then the two ends laid over, toward each other;
+then the last doubling, or rather trebling, across; and the open
+edge slipped over the folds. A wafer sealed it, and a thimble
+pressed it,--and there were twenty-five cents postage to pay. That
+was a letter in the old times, when Laura and Frank Shiere were
+little girls. And this was that letter:--
+
+     DEAR LAURA,--We got here safe, Aunt Oldways and I, a week ago
+     last Saturday, and it is _beautiful_. There is a green
+     lane,--almost everybody has a green lane,--and the cows go up
+     and down, and the swallows build in the barn-eaves. They fly
+     out at sundown, and fill all the sky up. It is like the specks
+     we used to watch in the sunshine when it came in across the
+     kitchen, and they danced up and down and through and away, and
+     seemed to be live things; only we couldn't tell, you know, what
+     they were, or if they really did know how good it was. But
+     these are big and real, and you can see their wings, and you
+     know what they mean by it. I guess it is all the same thing,
+     only some things are little and some are big. You can see the
+     stars here, too,--such a sky full. And that is all the same
+     again.
+
+     There are beautiful roofs and walls here. I guess you would
+     think you were high up! Harett and I go up from under the
+     cheese-room windows right over the whole house, and we sit on
+     the peak by the chimney. Harett is Mrs. Dillon's girl. Not the
+     girl that lives with her,--her daughter. But the girls that
+     live with people are daughters here. Somebody's else, I mean.
+     They are all alike. I suppose her name is Harriet, but they all
+     call her Harett. I don't like to ask her for fear she should
+     think I thought they didn't know how to pronounce.
+
+     I go to school with Harett; up to the West District. We carry
+     brown bread and butter, and doughnuts, and cheese, and
+     apple-pie in tin pails, for luncheon. Don't you remember the
+     brown cupboard in Aunt Oldways' kitchen, how sagey, and
+     doughnutty, and good it always smelt? It smells just so now,
+     and everything tastes just the same.
+
+     There is a great rock under an oak tree half way up to school,
+     by the side of the road. We always stop there to rest, coming
+     home. Three of the girls come the same way as far as that, and
+     we always save some of our dinner to eat up there, and we tell
+     stories. I tell them about dancing-school, and the time we went
+     to the theatre to see "Cinderella," and going shopping with
+     mother, and our little tea-parties, and the Dutch dolls we made
+     up in the long front chamber. O, _don't_ you remember, Laura?
+     What different pieces we have got into our remembrances
+     already! I feel as if I was making patchwork. Some-time,
+     may-be, I shall tell somebody about living _here_. Well, they
+     will be beautiful stories! Homesworth is an elegant place to
+     live in. You will see when you come next summer.
+
+     There is an apple tree down in the south orchard that bends
+     just like a horse's back. Then the branches come up over your
+     head and shade you. We ride there, and we sit and eat summer
+     apples there. Little rosy apples with dark streaks in them all
+     warm with the sun. You can't think what a smell they have, just
+     like pinks and spice boxes. Why don't they keep a little way
+     off from each other in cities, and so have room for apple
+     trees? I don't see why they need to crowd so. I hate to think
+     of you all shut up tight when I am let right out into green
+     grass, and blue sky, and apple orchards. That puts me in mind
+     of something! Zebiah Jane, Aunt Oldways' girl, always washes
+     her face in the morning at the pump-basin out in the back
+     dooryard, just like the ducks. She says she can't spatter round
+     in a room; she wants all creation for a slop-bowl. I feel as if
+     we had all creation for everything up here. But I can't put all
+     creation in a letter if I try. _That_ would spatter dreadfully.
+
+     I expect a long letter from you every day now. But I don't see
+     what you will make it out of. I think I have got all the
+     _things_ and you won't have anything left but the _words_. I am
+     sure you don't sit out on the wood-shed at Aunt Oferr's, and I
+     don't believe you pound stones and bricks, and make colors. Do
+     you know when we rubbed our new shoes with pounded stone and
+     made them gray?
+
+     I never told you about Luclarion. She came up as soon as the
+     things were all sent off, and she lives at the minister's.
+     Where she used to live is only two miles from here, but other
+     people live there now, and it is built on to and painted straw
+     color, with a green door.
+
+                  Your affectionate sister,
+                                FRANCES SHIERE.
+
+
+When Laura's letter came this was it:--
+
+     DEAR FRANK,--I received your kind letter a week ago, but we
+     have been very busy having a dressmaker and doing all our fall
+     shopping, and I have not had time to answer it before. We shall
+     begin to go to school next week, for the vacations are over,
+     and then I shall have ever so much studying to do. I am to take
+     lessons on the piano, too, and shall have to practice two hours
+     a day. In the winter we shall have dancing-school and
+     practicing parties. Aunt has had a new bonnet made for me. She
+     did not like the plain black silk one. This is of _gros
+     d'Afrique_, with little bands and cordings round the crown and
+     front; and I have a dress of _gros d'Afrique_, too, trimmed
+     with double folds piped on. For every-day I have a new black
+     _mousseline_ with white clover leaves on it, and an all-black
+     French chally to wear to dinner. I don't wear my black and
+     white calico at all. Next summer aunt means to have me wear
+     white almost all the time, with lavender and violet ribbons. I
+     shall have a white muslin with three skirts and a black sash to
+     wear to parties and to Public Saturdays, next winter. They have
+     Public Saturdays at dancing-school every three weeks. But only
+     the parents and relations can come. Alice and Geraldine dance
+     the shawl-dance with Helena Pomeroy, with crimson and white
+     Canton crape scarfs. They have showed me some of it at home.
+     Aunt Oferr says I shall learn the _gavotte_.
+
+     Aunt Oferr's house is splendid. The drawing-room is full of
+     sofas, and divans, and ottomans, and a _causeuse_, a little
+     S-shaped seat for two people. Everything is covered with blue
+     velvet, and there are blue silk curtains to the windows, and
+     great looking-glasses between, that you can see all down into
+     through rooms and rooms, as if there were a hundred of them. Do
+     you remember the story Luclarion used to tell us of when she
+     and her brother Mark were little children and used to play that
+     the looking-glass-things were real, and that two children lived
+     in them, in the other room, and how we used to make believe too
+     in the slanting chimney glass? You could make believe it here
+     with _forty_ children. But I don't make believe much now. There
+     is such a lot that is real, and it is all so grown up. It would
+     seem so silly to have such plays, you know. I can't help
+     thinking the things that come into my head though, and it seems
+     sometimes just like a piece of a story, when I walk into the
+     drawing-room all alone, just before company comes, with my
+     _gros d'Afrique_ on, and my puffed lace collar, and my hair
+     tied back with long new black ribbons. It all goes through my
+     head just how I look coming in, and how grand it is, and what
+     the words would be in a book about it, and I seem to act a
+     little bit, just to myself as if I were a girl in a story, and
+     it seems to say, "And Laura walked up the long drawing-room and
+     took a book bound in crimson morocco from the white marble pier
+     table and sat down upon the velvet ottoman in the balcony
+     window." But what happened then it never tells. I suppose it
+     will by and by. I am getting used to it all, though; it isn't
+     so _awfully_ splendid as it was at first.
+
+     I forgot to tell you that my new bonnet flares a great deal,
+     and that I have white lace quilling round the face with little
+     black dotty things in it on stems. They don't wear those close
+     cottage bonnets now. And aunt has had my dresses made longer
+     and my pantalettes shorter, so that they hardly show at all.
+     She says I shall soon wear long dresses, I am getting so tall.
+     Alice wears them now, and her feet look so pretty, and she has
+     such pretty slippers: little French purple ones, and sometimes
+     dark green, and sometimes beautiful light gray, to go with
+     different dresses. I don't care for anything but the slippers,
+     but I _should_ like such ones as hers. Aunt says I can't, of
+     course, as long as I wear black, but I can have purple ones
+     next summer to wear with my white dresses. That will be when I
+     come to see you.
+
+     I am afraid you will think this is a very _wearing_ kind of a
+     letter, there are so many 'wears' in it. I have been reading it
+     over so far, but I can't put in any other word.
+
+                  Your affectionate sister,
+                                   LAURA SHIERE.
+
+     P.S. Aunt Oferr says Laura Shiere is such a good sounding name.
+     It doesn't seem at all common. I am glad of it. I should hate
+     to be common.
+
+I do not think I shall give you any more of it just here than these
+two letters tell. We are not going through all Frank and Laura's
+story. That with which we have especially to do lies on beyond. But
+it takes its roots in this, as all stories take their roots far back
+and underneath.
+
+Two years after, Laura was in Homesworth for her second summer visit
+at the farm. It was convenient, while the Oferrs were at Saratoga.
+Mrs. Oferr was very much occupied now, of course, with introducing
+her own daughters. A year or two later, she meant to give Laura a
+season at the Springs. "All in turn, my dear, and good time," she
+said.
+
+The winter before, Frank had been a few weeks in New York. But it
+tired her dreadfully, she said. She liked the theatres and the
+concerts, and walking out and seeing the shops. But there was "no
+place to get out of it into." It didn't seem as if she ever really
+got home and took off her things. She told Laura it was like that
+first old letter of hers; it was just "wearing," all the time.
+
+Laura laughed. "But how can you live _without_ wearing?" said she.
+
+Frank stood by, wondering, while Laura unpacked her trunks that
+morning after her second arrival at Aunt Oldways'. She had done now
+even with the simplicity of white and violet, and her wardrobe
+blossomed out like the flush of a summer garden.
+
+She unfolded a rose-colored muslin, with little raised embroidered
+spots, and threw it over the bed.
+
+"Where _will_ you wear that, up here?" asked Frank, in pure
+bewilderment.
+
+"Why, I wear it to church, with my white Swiss mantle," answered
+Laura. "Or taking tea, or anything. I've a black silk _visite_ for
+cool days. That looks nice with it. And see here,--I've a pink
+sunshade. They don't have them much yet, even in New York. Mr.
+Pemberton Oferr brought these home from Paris, for Gerry and Alice,
+and me. Gerry's is blue. See! it tips back." And Laura set the dashy
+little thing with its head on one side, and held it up coquettishly.
+
+"They used them in carriages in Paris, he said, and in St.
+Petersburg, driving out on the Nevskoi Prospekt."
+
+"But where are your common things?"
+
+"Down at the bottom; I haven't come to them. They were put in first,
+because they would bear squeezing. I've two French calicoes, with
+pattern trimmings; and a lilac jaconet, with ruffles, open down the
+front."
+
+Laura wore long dresses now; and open wrappers were the height of
+the style.
+
+Laura astonished Homesworth the first Sunday of this visit, with her
+rose-colored toilet. Bonnet of shirred pink silk with moss rosebuds
+and a little pink lace veil; the pink muslin, full-skirted over two
+starched petticoats; even her pink belt had gay little borders of
+tiny buds and leaves, and her fan had a pink tassel.
+
+"They're the things I wear; why shouldn't I?" she said to Frank's
+remonstrance.
+
+"But up here!" said Frank. "It would seem nicer to wear
+something--stiller."
+
+So it would; a few years afterward Laura herself would have seen
+that it was more elegant; though Laura Shiere was always rather
+given to doing the utmost--in apparel--that the occasion tolerated.
+Fashions grew stiller in years after. But this June Sunday,
+somewhere in the last thirties or the first forties, she went into
+the village church like an Aurora, and the village long remembered
+the resplendence. Frank had on a white cambric dress, with a real
+rose in the bosom, cool and fresh, with large green leaves; and her
+"cottage straw" was trimmed with white lutestring, crossed over the
+crown.
+
+"Do you feel any better?" asked Aunt Oldways of Laura, when they
+came home to the country tea-dinner.
+
+"Better--how?" asked Laura, in surprise.
+
+"After all that 'wear' and _stare_," said Aunt Oldways, quietly.
+
+Aunt Oldways might have been astonished, but she was by no means
+awestruck, evidently; and Aunt Oldways generally spoke her mind.
+
+Somehow, with Laura Shiere, pink was pinker, and ribbons were more
+rustling than with most people. Upon some quiet unconscious folks,
+silk makes no spread, and color little show; with Laura every gleam
+told, every fibre asserted itself. It was the live Aurora, bristling
+and tingling to its farthest electric point. She did not toss or
+flaunt, either; she had learned better of Signor Pirotti how to
+carry herself; but she was in conscious _rapport_ with every thing
+and stitch she had about her. Some persons only put clothes on to
+their bodies; others really seem to contrive to put them on to their
+souls.
+
+Laura Shiere came up to Homesworth three years later, with something
+more wonderful than a pink embossed muslin:--she had a lover.
+
+Mrs. Oferr and her daughters were on their way to the mountains;
+Laura was to be left with the Oldways. Grant Ledwith accompanied
+them all thus far on their way; then he had to go back to Boston.
+
+"I can't think of anything but that pink sunshade she used to carry
+round canted all to one side over her shoulder," said Aunt Oldways,
+looking after them down the dusty road the morning that he went
+away. Laura, in her white dress and her straw hat and her silly
+little bronze-and-blue-silk slippers printing the roadside gravel,
+leaning on Grant Ledwith's arm, seemed only to have gained a fresh,
+graceful adjunct to set off her own pretty goings and comings with,
+and to heighten the outside interest of that little point of
+eternity that she called her life. Mr. Ledwith was not so much a man
+who had won a woman, as Laura was a girl who had "got a beau."
+
+She had sixteen tucked and trimmed white skirts, too, she told
+Frank; she should have eight more before she was married; people
+wore ever so many skirts now, at a time. She had been to a party a
+little while ago where she wore _seven_.
+
+There were deep French embroidery bands around some of these white
+skirts; those were beautiful for morning dresses. Geraldine Oferr
+was married last winter; Laura had been her bridesmaid; Gerry had a
+white brocade from Paris, and a point-lace veil. She had three dozen
+of everything, right through. They had gone to housekeeping up town,
+in West Sixteenth Street. Frank would have to come to New York next
+winter, or in the spring, to be _her_ bridesmaid; then she would
+see; then--who knew!
+
+Frank was only sixteen, and she lived away up here in Homesworth
+among the hills; she had not "seen," but she had her own little
+secret, for all that; something she neither told nor thought, yet
+which was there; and it came across her with a queer little thrill
+from the hidden, unlooked-at place below thought, that "Who"
+_didn't_ know.
+
+Laura waited a year for Grant Ledwith's salary to be raised to
+marrying point; he was in a wholesale woolen house in Boston; he was
+a handsome fellow, with gentlemanly and taking address,--capital,
+this, for a young salesman; and they put his pay up to two thousand
+dollars within that twelvemonth. Upon this, in the spring, they
+married; took a house in Filbert Street, down by the river, and set
+up their little gods. These were: a sprinkle of black walnut and
+brocatelle in the drawing-room, a Sheffield-plate tea-service, and a
+crimson-and-giltedged dinner set that Mrs. Oferr gave them; twilled
+turkey-red curtains, that looked like thibet, in the best chamber;
+and the twenty-four white skirts and the silk dresses, and whatever
+corresponded to them on the bride-groom's part, in their wardrobes.
+All that was left of Laura's money, and all that was given them by
+Grant Ledwith's father, and Mr. Titus Oldways' astounding present of
+three hundred dollars, without note or comment,--the first reminder
+they had had of him since Edward Shiere's funeral, "and goodness
+knew how he heard anything now," Aunt Oferr said,--had gone to this
+outfit. But they were well set up and started in the world; so
+everybody said, and so they, taking the world into their young,
+confident hands for a plaything, not knowing it for the perilous
+loaded shell it is, thought, merrily, themselves.
+
+Up in Homesworth people did not have to wait for two thousand dollar
+salaries. They would not get them if they did.
+
+Oliver Ripwinkley, the minister's son, finished his medical studies
+and city hospital practice that year, and came back, as he had
+always said he should do, to settle down for a country doctor. Old
+Doctor Parrish, the parson's friend of fifty years, with no child of
+his own, kept the place for Oliver, and hung up his old-fashioned
+saddle-bags in the garret the very day the young man came home. He
+was there to be "called in," however, and with this backing, and the
+perforce of there being nobody else, young Doctor Ripwinkley had ten
+patients within the first week; thereby opportunity for shewing
+himself in the eyes of ten families as a young man who "appeared to
+know pretty well what he was about."
+
+So that when he gave further proof of the same, by asking, within
+the week that followed, the prettiest girl in Homesworth, Frances
+Shiere, to come and begin the world with him at Mile Hill village,
+nobody, not even Frank herself, was astonished.
+
+She bought three new gowns, a shawl, a black silk mantle, and a
+straw bonnet. She made six each of every pretty white garment that a
+woman wears; and one bright mellow evening in September, they took
+their first tea in the brown-carpeted, white-shaded little corner
+room in the old "Rankin house;" a bigger place than they really
+wanted yet, and not all to be used at first; but rented
+"reasonable," central, sunshiny, and convenient; a place that they
+hoped they should buy sometime; facing on the broad sidegreen of the
+village street, and running back, with its field and meadow
+belongings, away to the foot of great, gray, sheltering Mile Hill.
+
+And the vast, solemn globe, heedless of what lit here or there upon
+its breadth, or took up this or that life in its little freckling
+cities, or between the imperceptible foldings of its hills,--only
+carrying way-passengers for the centuries,--went plunging on its
+track, around and around, and swept them all, a score of times,
+through its summer and its winter solstices.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+AFTERWARDS IS A LONG TIME.
+
+
+Old Mr. Marmaduke Wharne had come down from Outledge, in the
+mountains, on his way home to New York. He had stopped in Boston to
+attend to some affairs of his own,--if one can call them so, since
+Marmaduke Wharne never had any "own" affairs that did not chiefly
+concern, to their advantage, somebody else,--in which his friend Mr.
+Titus Oldways was interested, not personally, but Wharne fashion.
+Now, reader, you know something about Mr. Titus Oldways, which up to
+this moment, only God, and Marmaduke Wharne, and Rachel Froke, who
+kept Mr. Oldways' house, and wore a Friend's drab dress and white
+cap, and said "Titus," and "Marmaduke" to the two old gentlemen, and
+"thee" and "thou" to everybody,--have ever known. In a general way
+and relation, I mean; separate persons knew particular things; but
+each separate person thought the particular thing he knew to be a
+whimsical exception.
+
+Mr. Oldways did not belong to any church: but he had an English
+Prayer-book under his Bible on his study table, and Baxter and
+Fenelon and à Kempis and "Wesley's Hymns," and Swedenborg's "Heaven
+and Hell" and "Arcana Celestia," and Lowell's "Sir Launfal," and
+Dickens's "Christmas Carol," all on the same set of shelves,--that
+held, he told Marmaduke, his religion; or as much of it as he could
+get together. And he had this woman, who was a Friend, and who
+walked by the Inner Light, and in outer charity, if ever a woman
+did, to keep his house. "For," said he, "the blessed truth is, that
+the Word of God is in the world. Alive in it. When you know that,
+and wherever you can get hold of his souls, then and there you've
+got your religion,--a piece at a time. To prove and sort your
+pieces, and to straighten the tangle you might otherwise get into,
+there's _this_," and he laid his hand down on the Four Gospels,
+bound in white morocco, with a silver cross upon the cover,--a
+volume that no earthly creature, again, knew of, save Titus and
+Marmaduke and Rachel Froke, who laid it into a drawer when she swept
+and dusted, and placed it between the crimson folds of its quilted
+silken wrapper when she had finished, burnishing the silver cross
+gently with a scrap of chamois leather cut from a clean piece every
+time. There was nothing else delicate and exquisite in all the plain
+and grim establishment; and the crimson wrapper was comfortably
+worn, and nobody would notice it, lying on the table there, with an
+almanac, a directory, the big, open Worcester's Dictionary, and the
+scattered pamphlets and newspapers of the day.
+
+Out in the world, Titus Oldways went about with visor down.
+
+He gave to no fairs nor public charities; "let them get all they
+could that way, it wasn't his way," he said to Rachel Froke. The
+world thought he gave nothing, either of purse or life.
+
+There was a plan they had together,--he and Marmaduke Wharne,--this
+girls' story-book will not hold the details nor the idea of
+it,--about a farm they owned, and people working it that could go
+nowhere else to work anything; and a mill-privilege that might be
+utilized and expanded, to make--not money so much as safe and honest
+human life by way of making money; and they sat and talked this plan
+over, and settled its arrangements, in the days that Marmaduke
+Wharne was staying on in Boston, waiting for his other friend, Miss
+Craydocke, who had taken the River Road down from Outledge, and so
+come round by Z----, where she was staying a few days with the
+Goldthwaites and the Inglesides. Miss Craydocke had a share or two
+in the farm and in the mill.
+
+And now, Titus Oldways wanted to know of Marmaduke Wharne what he
+was to do for Afterwards.
+
+It was a question that had puzzled and troubled him. Afterwards.
+
+"While I live," he said, "I will do what I can, and _as_ I can. I
+will hand over my doing, and the wherewith, to no society or
+corporation. I'll pay no salaries nor circumlocutions. Neither will
+I--afterwards. And how is my money going to work on?"
+
+"_Your_ money?"
+
+"Well,--God's money."
+
+"How did it work when it came to you?"
+
+Mr. Oldways was silent.
+
+"He chose to send it to you. He made it in the order of things that
+it should come to you. You began, yourself, to work for money. You
+did not understand, then, that the money would be from God and was
+for Him."
+
+"He made me understand."
+
+"Yes. He looked out for that part of it too. He can look out for it
+again. His word shall not return unto him void."
+
+"He has given me this, though, to pass on; and I will not put it
+into a machine. I want to give some living soul a body for its
+living. Dead charities are dead. It's of no use to will it to you,
+Marmaduke; I'm as likely to stay on, perhaps, as you are."
+
+"And the youngest life might drop, the day after your own. You can't
+take it out of God's hand."
+
+"I must either let it go by law, or will it--here and there. I know
+enough whom it would help; but I want to invest, not spend it; to
+invest it in a life--or lives--that will carry it on from where I
+leave it. How shall I know?"
+
+"He giveth it a body as it pleaseth Him," quoted Marmaduke Wharne,
+thoughtfully. "I am English, you know, Oldways; I can't help
+reverencing the claims of next of kin. Unless one is plainly shown
+otherwise, it seems the appointment. How can we set aside his ways
+until He clearly points us out his own exception?"
+
+"My 'next' are two women whom I don't know, my niece's children. She
+died thirty years ago."
+
+"Perhaps you ought to know them."
+
+"I know _about_ them; I've kept the run; but I've held clear of
+family. They didn't need me, and I had no right to put it into their
+heads they did, unless I fully meant"--
+
+He broke off.
+
+"They're like everybody else, Wharne; neither better nor worse, I
+dare say; but the world is full of just such women. How do I know
+this money would be well in their hands--even for themselves?"
+
+"Find out."
+
+"One of 'em was brought up by an Oferr woman!"
+
+The tone in which he _commonized_ the name to a satiric general
+term, is not to be written down, and needed not to be interpreted.
+
+"The other is well enough," he went on, "and contented enough.
+A doctor's widow, with a little property, a farm and two
+children,--her older ones died very young,--up in New Hampshire. I
+might spoil _her_; and the other,--well, you see as I said, I _don't
+know_."
+
+"Find out," said Marmaduke Wharne, again.
+
+"People are not found out till they are tried."
+
+"Try 'em!"
+
+Mr. Oldways had been sitting with his head bent, thoughtfully, his
+eyes looking down, his hands on the two stiff, old-fashioned arms of
+his chair. At this last spondaic response from Marmaduke, he lifted
+his eyes and eyebrows,--not his head,--and raised himself slightly
+with his two hands pressing on the chair arms; the keen glance and
+the half-movement were impulsively toward his friend.
+
+"Eh?" said he.
+
+"Try 'em," repeated Marmaduke Wharne. "Give God's way a chance."
+
+Mr. Oldways, seated back in his chair again, looked at him intently;
+made a little vibration, as it were, with his body, that moved his
+head up and down almost imperceptibly, with a kind of gradual
+assenting apprehension, and kept utterly silent.
+
+So, their talk being palpably over for this time, Marmaduke Wharne
+got up presently to go. They nodded at each other, friendlily, as he
+looked back from the door.
+
+Left alone, Mr. Titus Oldways turned in his swivel-chair, around to
+his desk beside which he was sitting.
+
+"Next of kin?" he repeated to himself. "God's way?--Well! Afterwards
+is a long time. A man must give it up somewhere. Everything escheats
+to the king at last."
+
+And he took a pen in his hand and wrote a letter.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+HOW THE NEWS CAME TO HOMESWORTH.
+
+
+"I wish I lived in the city, and had a best friend," said Hazel
+Ripwinkley to Diana, as they sat together on the long, red, sloping
+kitchen roof under the arches of the willow-tree, hemming towels for
+their afternoon "stent." They did this because their mother sat on
+the shed roof under the fir, when she was a child, and had told them
+of it. Imagination is so much greater than fact, that these
+children, who had now all that little Frank Shiere had dreamed of
+with the tar smell and the gravel stones and the one tree,--who
+might run free in the wide woods and up the breezy hillsides,--liked
+best of all to get out on the kitchen roof and play "old times," and
+go back into their mother's dream.
+
+"I wish I lived in a block of houses, and could see across the
+corner into my best friend's room when she got up in the morning!"
+
+"And could have that party!" said Diana.
+
+"Think of the clean, smooth streets, with red sidewalks, and people
+living all along, door after door! I like things set in rows, and
+people having places, like the desks at school. Why, you've got to
+go way round Sand Hill to get to Elizabeth Ann Dorridon's. I should
+like to go up steps, and ring bells!"
+
+"I don't know," said Diana, slowly. "I think birds that build little
+nests about anywhere in the cunning, separate places, in the woods,
+or among the bushes, have the best time."
+
+"Birds, Dine! It ain't birds, it's people! What has that to do with
+it?"
+
+"I mean I think nests are better than martin-boxes."
+
+"Let's go in and get her to tell us that story. She's in the round
+room."
+
+The round room was a half ellipse, running in against the curve of
+the staircase. It was a bit of a place, with the window at one end,
+and the bow at the other. It had been Doctor Ripwinkley's office,
+and Mrs. Ripwinkley sat there with her work on summer afternoons.
+The door opened out, close at the front, upon a great flat stone in
+an angle, where was also entrance into the hall by the house-door,
+at the right hand. The door of the office stood open, and across the
+stone one could look down, between a range of lilac bushes and the
+parlor windows, through a green door-yard into the street.
+
+"Now, Mother Frank, tell us about the party!"
+
+They called her "Mother Frank" when they wished to be particularly
+coaxing. They had taken up their father's name for her, with their
+own prefix, when they were very little ones, before he went away and
+left nobody to call her Frank, every day, any more.
+
+"That same little old story? Won't you ever be tired of it,--you
+great girls?" asked the mother; for she had told it to them ever
+since they were six and eight years old.
+
+"Yes! No, never!" said the children.
+
+For how _should_ they outgrow it? It was a sunny little bit out of
+their mother's own child-life. We shall go back to smaller things,
+one day, maybe, and find them yet more beautiful. It is the _going_
+back, together.
+
+"The same old way?"
+
+"Yes; the very same old way."
+
+"We had little open-work straw hats and muslin pelisses,--your Aunt
+Laura and I,"--began Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she had begun all those
+scores of times before. "Mother put them on for us,--she dressed us
+just alike, always,--and told us to take each other's hands, and go
+up Brier and down Hickory streets, and stop at all the houses that
+she named, and that we knew; and we were to give her love and
+compliments, and ask the mothers in each house,--Mrs. Dayton, and
+Mrs. Holridge (she lived up the long steps), and Mrs. Waldow, and
+the rest of them, to let Caroline and Grace and Fanny and Susan, and
+the rest of _them_, come at four o'clock, to spend the afternoon and
+take tea, if it was convenient."
+
+"O, mother!" said Hazel, "you didn't say that when you _asked_
+people, you know."
+
+"O, no!" said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "That was when we went to stop a
+little while ourselves, without being asked. Well, it was to please
+to let them come. And all the ladies were at home, because it was
+only ten o'clock; and they all sent their love and compliments, and
+they were much obliged, and the little girls would be very happy.
+
+"It was a warm June day; up Brier Street was a steep walk; down
+Hickory we were glad to keep on the shady side, and thought it was
+nice that Mrs. Bemys and Mrs. Waldow lived there. The strings of our
+hats were very moist and clinging when we got home, and Laura had a
+blue mark under her chin from the green ribbon.
+
+"Mother was in her room, in her white dimity morning gown, with
+little bows up the front, the ends trimmed with cambric edging. She
+took off our hats and our pelisses,--the tight little sleeves came
+off wrong side out,--sponged our faces with cool water, and brushed
+out Laura's curls. That was the only difference between us. I
+hadn't any curls, and my hair had to be kept cropped. Then she went
+to her upper bureau drawer and took out two little paper boxes.
+
+"'Something has come for Blanche and Clorinda, since you have been
+gone,' she said, smiling. 'I suppose you have been shopping?' We
+took the paper boxes, laughing back at her with a happy
+understanding. We were used to these little plays of mother's, and
+she couldn't really surprise us with her kindnesses. We went and sat
+down in the window-seat, and opened them as deliberately and in as
+grown-up a way as we could. Inside them were two little lace
+pelerines lined with rose-colored silk. The boxes had a faint smell
+of musk. The things were so much better for coming in boxes! Mother
+knew that.
+
+"Well, we dressed our dolls, and it was a great long sunshiny
+forenoon. Mother and Luclarion had done something in the kitchen,
+and there was a smell of sweet baking in the house. Every now and
+then we sniffed, and looked at each other, and at mother, and
+laughed. After dinner we had on our white French calicoes with blue
+sprigs, and mother said she should take a little nap, and we might
+go into the parlor and be ready for our company. She always let us
+receive our own company ourselves at first. And exactly at four
+o'clock the door-bell rang, and they began to come.
+
+"Caroline and Fanny Dayton had on white cambric dresses, and green
+kid slippers. That was being very much dressed, indeed. Lucy Waldow
+wore a pink lawn, and Grace Holridge a buff French print. Susan
+Bemys said her little sister couldn't come because they couldn't
+find her best shoes. Her mother thought she had thrown them out of
+the window.
+
+"When they all got there we began to play 'Lady Fair;' and we had
+just got all the 'lady fairs,' one after another, into our ring, and
+were dancing and singing up and down and round and round, when the
+door opened and mother walked in.
+
+"We always thought our mother was the prettiest of any of the girls'
+mothers. She had such bright shining hair, and she put it up with
+shell combs into such little curly puffs. And she never seemed fussy
+or old, but she came in among us with such a beautiful, smiling way,
+as if she knew beforehand that it was all right, and there was no
+danger of any mischief, or that we shouldn't behave well, but she
+only wanted to see the good time. That day she had on a white muslin
+dress with little purple flowers on it, and a bow of purple ribbon
+right in the side of her hair. She had a little piece of fine work
+in her hand, and after she had spoken to all the little girls and
+asked them how their mothers were, she went and sat down in one of
+the front windows, and made little scollops and eyelets. I remember
+her long ivory stiletto, with a loop of green ribbon through the
+head of it, and the sharp, tiny, big-bowed scissors that lay in her
+lap, and the bright, tapering silver thimble on her finger.
+
+"Pretty soon the door opened again, softly; a tray appeared, with
+Hannah behind it. On the tray were little glass saucers with
+confectionery in them; old-fashioned confectionery,--gibraltars, and
+colored caraways, and cockles with mottoes. We were in the middle of
+'So says the Grand Mufti,' and Grace Holridge was the Grand Mufti.
+Hannah went up to her first, as she stood there alone, and Grace
+took a saucer and held it up before the row of us, and said, '_Thus_
+says the Grand Mufti!' and then she bit a red gibraltar, and
+everybody laughed. She did it so quickly and so prettily, putting
+it right into the play. It was good of her not to say, '_So_ says
+the Grand Mufti.' At least we thought so then, though Susan Bemys
+said it would have been funnier.
+
+"We had a great many plays in those days, and it took a long
+afternoon to get through with them. We had not begun to wonder what
+we should do next, when tea time came, and we went down into the
+basement room. It wasn't tea, though; it was milk in little clear,
+pink mugs, some that mother only had out for our parties, and cold
+water in crimped-edge glasses, and little biscuits, and
+sponge-cakes, and small round pound-cakes frosted. These were what
+had smelt so good in the morning.
+
+"We stood round the table; there was not room for all of us to sit,
+and mother helped us, and Hannah passed things round. Susan Bemys
+took cake three times, and Lucy Waldow opened her eyes wide, and
+Fanny Dayton touched me softly under the table.
+
+"After tea mother played and sung some little songs to us; and then
+she played the 'Fisher's Hornpipe' and 'Money Musk,' and we danced a
+little contra-dance. The girls did not all know cotillons, and some
+of them had not begun to go to dancing-school. Father came home and
+had his tea after we had done ours, and then he came up into the
+parlor and watched us dancing. Mr. Dayton came in, too. At about
+half past eight some of the other fathers called, and some of the
+mothers sent their girls, and everybody was fetched away. It was
+nine o'clock when Laura and I went to bed, and we couldn't go to
+sleep until after the clock struck ten, for thinking and saying what
+a beautiful time we had had, and anticipating how the girls would
+talk it all over next day at school. That," said Mrs. Ripwinkley,
+when she had finished, "was the kind of a party we used to have in
+Boston when I was a little girl. I don't know what the little girls
+have now."
+
+"Boston!" said Luclarion, catching the last words as she came in,
+with her pink cape bonnet on, from the Homesworth variety and
+finding store, and post-office. "You'll talk them children off to
+Boston, finally, Mrs. Ripwinkley! Nothing ever tugs so at one end,
+but there's something tugging at the other; and there's never a hint
+nor a hearing to anybody, that something more doesn't turn up
+concerning it. Here's a letter, Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley took it with some surprise. It was not her sister's
+handwriting nor Mr. Ledwith's, on the cover; and she rarely had a
+letter from them that was posted in Boston, now. They had been
+living at a place out of town for several years. Mrs. Ledwith knew
+better than to give her letters to her husband for posting. They got
+lost in his big wallet, and stayed there till they grew old.
+
+Who should write to Mrs. Ripwinkley, after all these years, from
+Boston?
+
+She looked up at Luclarion, and smiled. "It didn't take a Solomon,"
+said she, pointing to the postmark.
+
+"No, nor yet a black smooch, with only four letters plain, on an
+invelup. 'Taint that, it's the drift of things. Those girls have got
+Boston in their minds as hard and fast as they've got heaven; and I
+mistrust mightily they'll get there first somehow!"
+
+The girls were out of hearing, as she said this; they had got their
+story, and gone back to their red roof and their willow tree.
+
+"Why, Luclarion!" exclaimed Mrs. Ripwinkley, as she drew out and
+unfolded the letter sheet. "It's from Uncle Titus Oldways."
+
+"Then he ain't dead," remarked Luclarion, and went away into the
+kitchen.
+
+     "MY DEAR FRANCES,--I am seventy-eight years old. It is time I
+     got acquainted with some of my relations. I've had other work
+     to do in the world heretofore (at least I thought I had), and
+     so, I believe, have they. But I have a wish now to get you and
+     your sister to come and live nearer to me, that we may find out
+     whether we really are anything to each other or not. It seems
+     natural, I suppose, that we might be; but kinship doesn't all
+     run in the veins.
+
+     "I do not ask you to do this with reference to any possible
+     intentions of mine that might concern you after my death; my
+     wish is to do what is right by you, in return for your
+     consenting to my pleasure in the matter, while I am alive. It
+     will cost you more to live in Boston than where you do now, and
+     I have no business to expect you to break up and come to a new
+     home unless I can make it an object to you in some way. You can
+     do some things for your children here that you could not do in
+     Homesworth. I will give you two thousand dollars a year to live
+     on, and secure the same to you if I die. I have a house here in
+     Aspen Street, not far from where I live myself, which I will
+     give to either of you that it may suit. That you can settle
+     between you when you come. It is rather a large house, and Mrs.
+     Ledwith's family is larger, I think, than yours. The estate is
+     worth ten thousand dollars, and I will give the same sum to the
+     one who prefers, to put into a house elsewhere. I wish you to
+     reckon this as all you are ever to expect from me, except the
+     regard I am willing to believe I may come to have for you. I
+     shall look to hear from you by the end of the week.
+
+                "I remain, yours truly,
+
+                           "TITUS OLDWAYS."
+
+"Luclarion!" cried Mrs. Ripwinkley, with excitement, "come here and
+help me think!"
+
+"Only four days to make my mind up in," she said again, when
+Luclarion had read the letter through.
+
+Luclarion folded it and gave it back.
+
+"It won't take God four days to think," she answered quietly; "and
+you can ask _Him_ in four minutes. You and I can talk afterwards."
+And Luclarion got up and went away a second time into the kitchen.
+
+That night, after Diana and Hazel were gone to bed, their mother and
+Luclarion Grapp had some last words about it, sitting by the
+white-scoured kitchen table, where Luclarion had just done mixing
+bread and covered it away for rising. Mrs. Ripwinkley was apt to
+come out and talk things over at this time of the kneading. She
+could get more from Luclarion then than at any other opportunity.
+Perhaps that was because Miss Grapp could not walk off from the
+bread-trough; or it might be that there was some sympathy between
+the mixing of her flour and yeast into a sweet and lively
+perfection, and the bringing of her mental leaven wholesomely to
+bear.
+
+"It looks as if it were meant, Luclarion," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at
+last. "And just think what it will be for the children."
+
+"I guess it's meant fast enough," replied Luclarion. "But as for
+what it will be for the children,--why, that's according to what you
+all make of it. And that's the stump."
+
+Luclarion Grapp was fifty-four years old; but her views of life were
+precisely the same that they had been at twenty-eight.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+AND.
+
+
+There is a piece of Z----, just over the river, that they call
+"And."
+
+It began among the school-girls; Barbara Holabird had christened it,
+with the shrewdness and mischief of fourteen years old. She said the
+"and-so-forths" lived there.
+
+It was a little supplementary neighborhood; an after-growth, coming
+up with the railroad improvements, when they got a freight station
+established on that side for the East Z---- mills. "After Z----,
+what should it be but 'And?'" Barbara Holabird wanted to know. The
+people who lived there called it East Square; but what difference
+did that make?
+
+It was two miles Boston-ward from Z---- centre, where the down
+trains stopped first; that was five minutes gained in the time
+between it and the city. Land was cheap at first, and sure to come
+up in value; so there were some streets laid out at right angles,
+and a lot of houses put up after a pattern, as if they had all been
+turned out of blanc-mange moulds, and there was "East Square." Then
+people began by-and-by to build for themselves, and a little variety
+and a good deal of ambition came in. They had got to French roofs
+now; this was just before the day of the multitudinous little paper
+collar-boxes with beveled covers, that are set down everywhere now,
+and look as if they could be lifted up by the chimneys, any time,
+and be carried off with a thumb and finger. Two and a half story
+houses, Mansarded, looked grand; and the East Square people thought
+nothing slight of themselves, though the "old places" and the real
+Z---- families were all over on West Hill.
+
+Mrs. Megilp boarded in And for the summer.
+
+"Since Oswald had been in business she couldn't go far from the
+cars, you know; and Oswald had a boat on the river, and he and
+Glossy enjoyed that so much. Besides, she had friends in Z----,
+which made it pleasant; and she was tired, for her part, of crowds
+and fashion. All she wanted was a quiet country place. She knew the
+Goldthwaites and the Haddens; she had met them one year at
+Jefferson."
+
+Mrs. Megilp had found out that she could get larger rooms in And
+than she could have at the mountains or the sea-shore, and at half
+the price; but this she did not mention. Yet there was nothing
+shabby in it, except her carefully _not_ mentioning it.
+
+Mrs. Megilp was Mrs. Grant Ledwith's chief intimate and counselor.
+She was a good deal the elder; that was why it was mutually
+advantageous. Grant Ledwith was one of the out-in-the-world,
+up-to-the-times men of the day; the day in which everything is
+going, and everybody that is in active life has, somehow or other,
+all that is going. Grant Ledwith got a good salary, an inflated
+currency salary; and he spent it all. His daughters were growing up,
+and they were stylish and pretty; Mrs. Megilp took a great interest
+in Agatha and Florence Ledwith, and was always urging their mother
+to "do them justice." "Agatha and Florence were girls who had a
+right to every advantage." Mrs. Megilp was almost old enough to be
+Laura Ledwith's mother; she had great experience, and knowledge of
+the world; and she sat behind Laura's conscience and drove it tandem
+with her inclination.
+
+Per contra, it was nice for Mrs. Megilp, who was a widow, and whose
+income did not stretch with the elasticity of the times, to have
+friends who lived like the Ledwiths, and who always made her
+welcome; it was a good thing for Glossy to be so fond of Agatha and
+Florence, and to have them so fond of her. "She needed young
+society," her mother said. One reason that Glossy Megilp needed
+young society might be in the fact that she herself was twenty-six.
+
+Mrs. Megilp had advised the Ledwiths to buy a house in Z----. "It
+was just far enough not to be suburban, but to have a society of its
+own; and there _was_ excellent society in Z----, everybody knew.
+Boston was hard work, nowadays; the distances were getting to be so
+great." Up to the West and South Ends,--the material distances,--she
+meant to be understood to say; but there was an inner sense to Mrs.
+Megilp's utterances, also.
+
+"One might as well be quite out of town; and then it was always
+something, even in such city connection as one might care to keep
+up, to hail from a well-recognized social independency; to belong to
+Z---- was a standing, always. It wasn't like going to Forest Dell,
+or Lakegrove, or Bellair; cheap little got-up places with fancy
+names, that were strung out on the railroads like French gilt beads
+on a chain."
+
+But for all that, Mrs. Ledwith had only got into "And;" and Mrs.
+Megilp knew it.
+
+Laura did not realize it much; she had bowing and speaking
+acquaintance with the Haddens and the Hendees, and even with the
+Marchbankses, over on West Hill; and the Goldthwaites and the
+Holabirds, down in the town, she knew very well. She did not care to
+come much nearer; she did not want to be bound by any very
+stringent and exclusive social limits; it was a bother to keep up
+to all the demands of such a small, old-established set. Mrs. Hendee
+would not notice, far less be impressed by the advent of her
+new-style Brussels carpet with a border, or her full, fresh,
+Nottingham lace curtains, or the new covering of her drawing-room
+set with cuir-colored terry. Mrs. Tom Friske and Mrs. Philgry, down
+here at East Square, would run in, and appreciate, and admire, and
+talk it all over, and go away perhaps breaking the tenth commandment
+amiably in their hearts.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith's nerves had extended since we saw her as a girl; they
+did not then go beyond the floating ends of her blue or rose-colored
+ribbons, or, at furthest, the tip of her jaunty laced sunshade; now
+they ramified,--for life still grows in some direction,--to her
+chairs, and her china, and her curtains, and her ruffled
+pillow-shams. Also, savingly, to her children's "suits," and party
+dresses, and pic-nic hats, and double button gloves. Savingly; for
+there is a leaven of grace in mother-care, even though it be
+expended upon these. Her friend, Mrs. Inchdeepe, in Helvellyn Park,
+with whom she dined when she went shopping in Boston, had _nothing_
+but her modern improvements and her furniture. "My house is my
+life," she used to say, going round with a Canton crape duster,
+touching tenderly carvings and inlayings and gildings.
+
+Mrs. Megilp was spending the day with Laura Ledwith; Glossy was gone
+to town, and thence down to the sea-shore, with some friends.
+
+Mrs. Megilp spent a good many days with Laura. She had large, bright
+rooms at her boarding-house, but then she had very gristly veal pies
+and thin tapioca puddings for dinner; and Mrs. Megilp's constitution
+required something more generous. She was apt to happen in at this
+season, when Laura had potted pigeons. A little bird told her; a
+dozen little birds, I mean, with their legs tied together in a
+bunch; for she could see the market wagon from her window, when it
+turned up Mr. Ledwith's avenue.
+
+Laura had always the claret pitcher on her dinner table, too; and
+claret and water, well-sugared, went deliciously with the savory
+stew.
+
+They were up-stairs now, in Laura's chamber; the bed and sofa were
+covered with silk and millinery; Laura was looking over the girls'
+"fall things;" there was a smell of sweet marjoram and thyme and
+cloves, and general richness coming up from the kitchen; there was a
+bland sense of the goodness of Providence in Mrs. Megilp's--no, not
+heart, for her heart was not very hungry; but in her eyes and
+nostrils.
+
+She was advising Mrs. Ledwith to take Desire and Helena's two green
+silks and make them over into one for Helena.
+
+"You can get two whole back breadths then, by piecing it up under
+the sash; and you _can't_ have all those gores again; they are quite
+done with. Everybody puts in whole breadths now. There's just as
+much difference in the _way_ of goring a skirt, as there is between
+gores and straight selvages."
+
+"They do hang well, though; they have such a nice slope."
+
+"Yes,--but the stripes and the seams! Those tell the story six rods
+off; and then there _must_ be sashes, or postillions, or something;
+they don't make anything without them; there isn't any finish to a
+round waist unless you have something behind."
+
+"They wore belts last year, and I bought those expensive gilt
+buckles. I'm sure they used to look sweetly. But there! a fashion
+doesn't last nowadays while you're putting a thing on and walking
+out of the house!"
+
+"And don't put in more than three plaits," pursued Mrs. Megilp,
+intent on the fate of the green silks. "Everything is gathered; you
+see that is what requires the sashes; round waists and gathers have
+a queer look without."
+
+"If you once begin to alter, you've got to make all over," said Mrs.
+Ledwith, a little fractiously, putting the scissors in with
+unwilling fingers. She knew there was a good four days' work before
+her, and she was quick with her needle, too.
+
+"Never mind; the making over doesn't cost anything; you turn off
+work so easily; and then you've got a really stylish thing."
+
+"But with all the ripping and remodelling, I don't get time to turn
+round, myself, and _live_! It is all fall work, and spring work, and
+summer work and winter work. One drive rushes pell-mell right over
+another. There isn't time enough to make things and have them; the
+good of them, I mean."
+
+"The girls get it; we have to live in our children," said Mrs.
+Megilp, self-renouncingly. "I can never rest until Glossy is
+provided with everything; and you know, Laura, I _am_ obliged to
+contrive."
+
+Mrs. Megilp and her daughter Glaucia spent about a thousand dollars
+a year, between them, on their dress. In these days, this is a
+limited allowance--for the Megilps. But Mrs. Megilp was a woman of
+strict pecuniary principle; the other fifteen hundred must pay all
+the rest; she submitted cheerfully to the Divine allotment, and
+punctually made the two ends meet. She will have this to show, when
+the Lord of these servants cometh and reckoneth with them, and that
+man who has been also in narrow circumstances, brings his nicely
+kept talent out of his napkin.
+
+Desire Ledwith, a girl of sixteen, spoke suddenly from a corner
+where she sat with a book,--
+
+"I do wonder who '_they_' are, mamma!"
+
+"Who?" said Mrs. Ledwith, half rising from her chair, and letting
+some breadths of silk slide down upon the floor from her lap, as she
+glanced anxiously from the window down the avenue. She did not want
+any company this morning.
+
+"Not that, mamma; I don't mean anybody coming. The 'theys' that
+wear, and don't wear, things; the theys you have to be just like,
+and keep ripping and piecing for."
+
+"You absurd child!" exclaimed Mrs. Ledwith, pettishly. "To make me
+spill a whole lapful of work for that! They? Why, everybody, of
+course."
+
+"Everybody complains of them, though. Jean Friske says her mother is
+all discouraged and worn out. There isn't a thing they had last year
+that won't have to be made over this, because they put in a breadth
+more behind, and they only gore side seams. And they don't wear
+black capes or cloth sacks any more with all kinds of dresses; you
+must have suits, clear through. It seems to me 'they' is a nuisance.
+And if it's everybody, we must be part of it. Why doesn't somebody
+stop?"
+
+"Desire, I wish you'd put away your book, and help, instead of
+asking silly questions. You can't make the world over, with 'why
+don'ts?'"
+
+"I'll _rip_," said Desire, with a slight emphasis; putting her book
+down, and coming over for a skirt and a pair of scissors. "But you
+know I'm no good at putting together again. And about making the
+world over, I don't know but that might be as easy as making over
+all its clothes, I'd as lief try, of the two."
+
+Desire was never cross or disagreeable; she was only
+"impracticable," her mother said. "And besides that, she didn't know
+what she really did want. She was born hungry and asking, with those
+sharp little eyes, and her mouth always open while she was a baby.
+'It was a sign,' the nurse said, when she was three weeks old. And
+then the other sign,--that she should have to be called 'Desire!'"
+
+Mrs. Megilp--for Mrs. Megilp had been in office as long ago as
+that--had suggested ways of getting over or around the difficulty,
+when Aunt Desire had stipulated to have the baby named for her, and
+had made certain persuasive conditions.
+
+"There's the pretty French turn you might give it,--'Desirée.' Only
+one more 'e,' and an accent. That is so sweet, and graceful, and
+distinguished!"
+
+"But Aunt Desire won't have the name twisted. It is to be real,
+plain Desire, or not at all."
+
+Mrs. Megilp had shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"Well, of course it can be that, to christen by, and marry by, and
+be buried by. But between whiles,--people pick up names,--you'll
+see!"
+
+Mrs. Megilp began to call her "Daisy" when she was two years old.
+Nobody could help what Mrs. Megilp took a fancy to call her by way
+of endearment, of course; and Daisy she was growing to be in the
+family, when one day, at seven years old, she heard Mrs. Megilp say
+to her mother,--
+
+"I don't see but that you've all got your _Desire_, after all. The
+old lady is satisfied; and away up there in Hanover, what can it
+signify to her? The child is 'Daisy,' practically, now, as long as
+she lives."
+
+The sharp, eager little gray eyes, so close together in the high,
+delicate head, glanced up quickly at speaker and hearer.
+
+"What old lady, mamma, away up in Hanover?"
+
+"Your Aunt Desire, Daisy, whom you were named for. She lives in
+Hanover. You are to go and see her there, this summer."
+
+"Will she call me Daisy?"
+
+The little difficulty suggested in this question had singularly
+never occurred to Mrs. Ledwith before. Miss Desire Ledwith never
+came down to Boston; there was no danger at home.
+
+"No. She is old-fashioned, and doesn't like pet names. She will call
+you Desire. That is your name, you know."
+
+"Would it signify if she thought you called me Daisy?" asked the
+child frowning half absently over her doll, whose arm she was
+struggling to force into rather a tight sleeve of her own
+manufacture.
+
+"Well, perhaps she might not exactly understand. People always went
+by their names when she was a child, and now hardly anybody does.
+She was very particular about having you called for her, and you
+_are_, you know. I always write 'Desire Ledwith' in all your books,
+and--well, I always _shall_ write it so, and so will you. But you
+can be Daisy when we make much of you here at home, just as Florence
+is Flossie."
+
+"No, I can't," said the little girl, very decidedly, getting up and
+dropping her doll. "Aunt Desire, away up in Hanover, is thinking all
+the time that there is a little Desire Ledwith growing up down here.
+I don't mean to have her cheated. I'm going to went by my name, as
+she did. Don't call me Daisy any more, all of you; for I shan't
+come!"
+
+The gray eyes sparkled; the whole little face scintillated, as it
+were. Desire Ledwith had a keen, charged little face; and when
+something quick and strong shone through it, it was as if somewhere
+behind it there had been struck fire.
+
+She was true to that through all the years after; going to school
+with Mabels and Ethels and Graces and Ediths,--not a girl she knew
+but had a pretty modern name,--and they all wondering at that stiff
+little "Desire" of hers that she would go by. When she was twelve
+years old, the old lady up in Hanover had died, and left her a gold
+watch, large and old-fashioned, which she could only keep on a stand
+in her room,--a good solid silver tea-set, and all her spoons, and
+twenty-five shares in the Hanover Bank.
+
+Mrs. Megilp called her Daisy, with gentle inadvertence, one day
+after that. Desire lifted her eyes slowly at her, with no other
+reply in her face, or else.
+
+"You might please your mother now, I think," said Mrs. Megilp.
+"There is no old lady to be troubled by it."
+
+"A promise isn't ever dead, Mrs. Megilp," said Desire, briefly. "I
+shall keep our words."
+
+"After all," Mrs. Megilp said privately to the mother, "there is
+something quietly aristocratic in an old, plain, family name. I
+don't know that it isn't good taste in the child. Everybody
+understands that it was a condition, and an inheritance."
+
+Mrs. Megilp had taken care of that. She was watchful for the small
+impressions she could make in behalf of her particular friends. She
+carried about with her a little social circumference in which all
+was preëminently as it should be.
+
+But,--as I would say if you could not see it for yourself--this is
+a digression. We will go back again.
+
+"If it were any use!" said Desire, shaking out the deep plaits as
+she unfastened them from the band. "But you're only a piece of
+everybody after all. You haven't anything really new or particular
+to yourself, when you've done. And it takes up so much time. Last
+year, this was so pretty! _Isn't_ anything actually pretty in
+itself, or can't they settle what it is? I should think they had
+been at it long enough."
+
+"Fashions never were so graceful as they are this minute," said Mrs.
+Megilp. "Of course it is art, like everything else, and progress.
+The world is getting educated to a higher refinement in it, every
+day. Why, it's duty, child!" she continued, exaltedly. "Think what
+the world would be if nobody cared. We ought to make life beautiful.
+It's meant to be. There's not only no virtue in ugliness, but almost
+no virtue _with_ it, I think. People are more polite and
+good-natured when they are well dressed and comfortable."
+
+"_That's_ dress, too, though," said Desire, sententiously. "You've
+got to stay at home four days, and rip, and be tired, and cross, and
+tried-on-to, and have no chance to do anything else, before you can
+put it all on and go out and be good-natured and bland, and help put
+the beautiful face on the world, _one_ day. I don't believe it's
+political economy."
+
+"Everybody doesn't have to do it for themselves. Really, when I hear
+people blamed for dress and elegance,--why, the very ones who have
+the most of it are those who sacrifice the least time to it. They
+just go and order what they want, and there's the end of it. When it
+comes home, they put it on, and it might as well be a flounced silk
+as a plain calico."
+
+"But we _do_ have to think, Mrs. Megilp. And work and worry. And
+then we _can't_ turn right round in the things we know every stitch
+of and have bothered over from beginning to end, and just be lilies
+of the field!"
+
+"A great many people do have to wash their own dishes, and sweep,
+and scour; but that is no reason it ought not to be done. I always
+thought it was rather a pity that was said, _just so_," Mrs. Megilp
+proceeded, with a mild deprecation of the Scripture. "There _is_
+toiling and spinning; and will be to the end of time, for some of
+us."
+
+"There's cauliflower brought for dinner, Mrs. Ledwith," said
+Christina, the parlor girl, coming in. "And Hannah says it won't go
+with the pigeons. Will she put it on the ice for to-morrow?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Mrs. Ledwith, absently, considering a breadth
+that had a little hitch in it. "Though what we shall have to-morrow
+I'm sure I don't know," she added, rousing up. "I wish Mr. Ledwith
+wouldn't send home the first thing he sees, without any reference."
+
+"And here's the milkman's bill, and a letter," continued Christina,
+laying them down on a chair beside her mistress, and then departing.
+
+Great things come into life so easily, when they do come, right
+alongside of milk-bills and cabbages! And yet one may wait so long
+sometimes for anything to happen _but_ cabbages!
+
+The letter was in a very broad, thick envelope, and sealed with wax.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith looked at it curiously before she opened it. She
+did not receive many letters. She had very little time for
+correspondence. It was addressed to "Mrs. Laura Ledwith." That
+was odd and unusual, too.
+
+Mrs. Megilp glanced at her over the tortoise-shell rims of her
+eye-glasses, but sat very quiet, lest she should delay the opening.
+She would like to know what could be in that very business-like
+looking despatch, and Laura would be sure to tell her. It must be
+something pretty positive, one way or another; it was no
+common-place negative communication. Laura might have had property
+left her. Mrs. Megilp always thought of possibilities like that.
+
+When Laura Ledwith had unfolded the large commercial sheet, and
+glanced down the open lines of square, upright characters, whose
+purport could be taken in at sight, like print, she turned very red
+with a sudden excitement. Then all the color dropped away, and there
+was nothing in her face but blank, pale, intense surprise.
+
+"It is a most _won_derful thing!" said she, at last, slowly; and her
+breath came like a gasp with her words. "My great-uncle, Mr.
+Oldways."
+
+She spoke those four words as if from them Mrs. Megilp could
+understand everything.
+
+Mrs. Megilp thought she did.
+
+"Ah! Gone?" she asked, pathetically.
+
+"Gone! No, indeed!" said Mrs. Ledwith. "He wrote the letter. He
+wants me to _come_; me, and all of us,--to Boston, to live; and to
+get acquainted with him."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, with the promptness and benignity of a
+Christian apostle, "it's your duty to go."
+
+"And he offers me a house, and two thousand dollars a year."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Megilp, "it is _emphatically_ your duty to go."
+
+All at once something strange came over Laura Ledwith. She crumpled
+the letter tight in her hands with a clutch of quick excitement, and
+began to choke with a little sob, and to laugh at the same time.
+
+"Don't give way!" cried Mrs. Megilp, coming to her and giving her a
+little shake and a slap. "If you do once you will again, and you're
+_not_ hystericky!"
+
+"He's sent for Frank, too. Frank and I will be together again in
+dear old Boston! But--we can't be children and sit on the shed any
+more; and--it _isn't_ dear old Boston, either!"
+
+And then Laura gave right up, and had a good cry for five minutes.
+After that she felt better, and asked Mrs. Megilp how she thought a
+house in Spiller Street would do.
+
+But she couldn't rip any more of those breadths that morning.
+
+Agatha and Florence came in from some calls at the Goldthwaites and
+the Haddens, and the news was told, and they had their bonnets to
+take off, and the dinner-bell rang, and the smell of the spicy
+pigeon-stew came up the stairs, all together. And they went down,
+talking fast; and one said "house," and another "carpets," and
+another "music and German;" and Desire, trailing a breadth of green
+silk in her hand that she had never let go since the letter was
+read, cried out, "oratorios!" And nobody quite knew what they were
+going down stairs for, or had presence of mind to realize the
+pigeons, or help each other or themselves properly, when they got
+there! Except Mrs. Megilp, who was polite and hospitable to them
+all, and picked two birds in the most composed and elegant manner.
+
+When the dessert was put upon the table, and Christina, confusedly
+enlightened as to the family excitement, and excessively curious,
+had gone away into the kitchen, Mrs. Ledwith said to Mrs. Megilp,--
+
+"I'm not sure I should fancy Spiller Street, after all; it's a sort
+of a corner. Westmoreland Street or Helvellyn Park might be nice. I
+know people down that way,--Mrs. Inchdeepe."
+
+"Mrs. Inchdeepe isn't exactly 'people,'" said Mrs. Megilp, in a
+quiet way that implied more than grammar. "Don't get into 'And' in
+Boston, Laura!--With such an addition to your income, and what your
+uncle gives you toward a house, I don't see why you might not think
+of Republic Avenue."
+
+"We shall have plenty of thinking to do about everything," said
+Laura.
+
+"Mamma," said Agatha, insinuatingly, "I'm thinking, already; about
+that rose-pink paper for my room. I'm glad now I didn't have it
+here."
+
+Agatha had been restless for white lace, and rose-pink, and a
+Brussels carpet ever since her friend Zarah Thoole had come home
+from Europe and furnished a morning-room.
+
+All this time Mr. Grant Ledwith, quite unconscious of the impending
+changes with which his family were so far advanced in imagination,
+was busy among bales and samples in Devonshire Street. It got to be
+an old story by the time the seven o'clock train was in, and he
+reached home. It was almost as if it had all happened a year ago,
+and they had been waiting for him to come home from Australia.
+
+There was so much to explain to him that it was really hard to make
+him understand, and to bring him up to the point from which they
+could go on together.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+WAKING UP.
+
+
+The Ledwiths took apartments in Boston for a month. They packed away
+the furniture they wanted to keep for upper rooms, in the attics of
+their house at Z----. They had an auction of all the furniture of
+their drawing-room, dining-room, library, and first floor of
+sleeping-rooms. Then they were to let their house. Meanwhile, one
+was to be fixed upon and fitted up in Boston. In all this Mrs.
+Megilp advised, invaluably.
+
+"It's of no use to move things," she said. "Three removes are as bad
+as a fire; and nothing ever fits in to new places. Old wine and new
+bottles, you know! Clear all off with a country auction. Everybody
+comes, and they all fight for everything. Things bring more than
+their original cost. Then you've nothing to do but order according
+to your taste."
+
+Mr. Oldways had invited both his nieces to his own house on their
+arrival. But here again Mrs. Megilp advised,--so judiciously.
+
+"There are too many of you; it would be a positive infliction. And
+then you'll have all your running about and planning and calculating
+to do, and the good old gentleman would think he had pulled half
+Boston down about his ears. Your sister can go there; it would be
+only generous and thoughtful to give way to her. There are only
+three of them, and they are strange, you know, to every thing, and
+wouldn't know which way to turn. I can put you in the way of rooms
+at the Bellevue, exactly the thing, for a hundred and fifty a
+month. No servants, you see; meals at the restaurant, and very good,
+too. The Wedringtons are to give them up unexpectedly; going to
+Europe; poor Mrs. Wedrington is so out of health. And about the
+house; don't decide in a hurry; see what your uncle says, and your
+sister. It's very likely she'll prefer the Aspen Street house; and
+it _would_ be out of the way for you. Still it is not to be
+_refused_, you know; of course it is very desirable in many
+respects; roomy, old-fashioned, and a garden. I think your sister
+will like those things; they're what she has been used to. If she
+does, why it's all comfortably settled, and nobody refuses. It is so
+ungracious to appear to object; a gift horse, you know."
+
+"Not to be refused; only by no means to be taken; masterly
+inactivity till somebody else is hooked; and then somebody else is
+to be grateful for the preference. I wish Mrs. Megilp wouldn't shine
+things up so; and that mother wouldn't go to her to black all her
+boots!"
+
+Desire said this in secret, indignant discomfort, to Helena, the
+fourth in the family, her chum-sister. Helena did very well to talk
+to; she heard anything; then she pranced round the room and chaffed
+the canary.
+
+"Chee! chee! chee! chiddle, iddle, iddle, iddle, e-e-ee! Where do
+you keep all your noise and your breath? You're great, aren't you?
+You do that to spite people that have to work up one note at a time.
+You don't take it in away down under your belt, do you? You're not
+particular about that. You don't know much, after all. You don't
+know _how_ you do it. You aren't learning of Madame Caroletti. And
+you haven't learned two quarters, any way. You were only just born
+last spring. Set up! Tr-r-r-r-e-e-ee! I can do that myself. I don't
+believe you've got an octave in you. Poh!"
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley came down from the country with a bonnet on that
+had a crown, and with not a particle of a chignon. When she was
+married, twenty-five years before, she wore a French twist,--her
+hair turned up in waves from her neck as prettily as it did away
+from her forehead,--and two thick coiled loops were knotted and
+fastened gracefully at the top. She had kept on twisting her hair
+so, all these years; and the rippling folds turned naturally under
+her fingers into their places. The color was bright still, and it
+had not thinned. Over her brows it parted richly, with no fuzz or
+crimp; but a sweet natural wreathing look that made her face young.
+Mrs. Ledwith had done hers over slate-pencils till she had burned it
+off; and now tied on a friz, that came low down, for fashion's sake,
+and left visible only a little bunch of puckers between her eyebrows
+and the crowsfeet at the corners. The back of her head was weighted
+down by an immense excrescence in a bag. Behind her ears were bare
+places. Mrs. Ledwith began to look old-young. And a woman cannot get
+into a worse stage of looks than that. Still, she was a showy
+woman--a good exponent of the reigning style; and she was
+handsome--she and her millinery--of an evening, or in the street.
+
+When I began that last paragraph I meant to tell you what else Mrs.
+Ripwinkley brought with her, down out of the country and the old
+times; but hair takes up a deal of room. She brought down all her
+dear old furniture. That is, it came after her in boxes, when she
+had made up her mind to take the Aspen Street house.
+
+"Why, that's the sofa Oliver used to lie down on when he came home
+tired from his patients, and that's the rocking-chair I nursed my
+babies in; and this is the old oak table we've sat round three times
+a day, the family of us growing and thinning, as the time went on,
+all through these years. It's like a communion table, now, Laura. Of
+course such things had to come."
+
+This was what she answered, when Laura ejaculated her amazement at
+her having brought "old Homesworth truck" to Boston.
+
+"You see it isn't the walls that make the home; we can go away from
+them and not break our hearts, so long as our own goes with us. The
+little things that we have used, and that have grown around us with
+our living,--they are all of living that we can handle and hold on
+to; and if I went to Spitzbergen, I should take as many of them as I
+could."
+
+The Aspen Street house just suited Mrs. Ripwinkley, and Diana, and
+Hazel.
+
+In the first place, it was wooden; built side to the street, so that
+you went up a little paved walk, in a shade of trees, to get to the
+door; and then the yard, on the right hand side as you came in, was
+laid out in narrow walks between borders of blossoming plants. There
+were vines against the brick end of the next building,--creepers and
+morning-glories, and white and scarlet runners; and a little
+martin-box was set upon a pole in the still, farther corner.
+
+The rooms of the house were low, but large; and some of the windows
+had twelve-paned sashes,--twenty-four to a window. Mrs. Ripwinkley
+was charmed with these also. They were like the windows at Mile
+Hill.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith, although greatly relieved by her sister's prompt
+decision for the house which she did _not_ want, felt it in her
+conscience to remonstrate a little.
+
+"You have just come down from the mountains, Frank, after your
+twenty-five years' sleep; you've seen nothing by and by you will
+think differently. This house is fearfully old-fashioned,
+_fearfully_; and it's away down here on the wrong side of the hill.
+You can never get up over Summit Street from here."
+
+"We are used to hills, and walking."
+
+"But I mean--that isn't all. There are other things you won't be
+able to get over. You'll never shake off Aspen Street dust,--you nor
+the children."
+
+"I don't think it is dusty. It is quiet, and sheltered, and clean. I
+like it ever so much," said Mrs. Ripwinkley.
+
+"O, dear, you don't understand in the least! It's wicked to let you
+go on so! You poor, dear, simple little old soul!"
+
+"Never mind," said Mrs. Megilp. "It's all well enough for the
+present. It pleases the old gentleman, you know; and after all he's
+done, he ought to be pleased. One of you should certainly be in his
+neighborhood. _He_ has been here from time immemorial; and any place
+grows respectable by staying in it long enough--from _choice_.
+Nobody will wonder at Mrs. Ripwinkley's coming here at his request.
+And when she _does_ move, you see, she will know exactly what she is
+about."
+
+"I almost doubt if she ever _will_ know what she is about," said
+Laura.
+
+"In that case,--well,"--said Mrs. Megilp, and stopped, because it
+really was not in the least needful to say more.
+
+Mrs. Megilp felt it judicious, for many reasons, that Mrs.
+Ripwinkley should he hidden away for awhile, to get that mountain
+sleep out of her eyes, if it should prove possible; just as we rub
+old metal with oil and put it by till the rust comes off.
+
+The Ledwiths decided upon a house in Shubarton Place that would not
+seem quite like taking old Uncle Titus's money and rushing away
+with it as far as city limits would allow; and Laura really did wish
+to have the comfort of her sister's society, in a cozy way, of
+mornings, up in her room; that was her chief idea about it. There
+were a good many times and things in which she scarcely expected
+much companionship from Frank. She would not have said even to
+herself, that Frank was rusty; and she would do her faithful and
+good-natured best to rub her up; but there was an instinct with her
+of the congruous and the incongruous; and she would not do her
+Bath-brick polishing out on the public promenade.
+
+They began by going together to the carpet stores and the paper
+warehouses; but they ended in detailing themselves for separate
+work; their ideas clashed ridiculously, and perpetually confused
+each other. Frank remembered loyally her old brown sofa and chairs;
+she would not have gay colors to put them out of countenance; for
+even if she re-covered them, she said they should have the same old
+homey complexion. So she chose a fair, soft buff, with a pattern of
+brown leaves, for her parlor paper; Mrs. Ledwith, meanwhile,
+plunging headlong into glories of crimson and garnet and gold.
+Agatha had her blush pink, in panels, with heart-of-rose borders,
+set on with delicate gilt beadings; you would have thought she was
+going to put herself up, in a fancy-box, like a French _mouchoir_ or
+a _bonbon_.
+
+"Why _don't_ you put your old brown things all together in an
+up-stairs room, and call it Mile Hill? You could keep it for old
+times' sake, and sit there mornings; the house is big enough; and
+then have furniture like other people's in the parlor?"
+
+"You see it wouldn't be _me_." said Mrs. Ripwinkley, simply.
+
+"They keep saying it 'looks,' and 'it looks,'" said Diana to her
+mother, at home. "Why must everything _look_ somehow?"
+
+"And every_body_, too," said Hazel. "Why, when we meet any one in
+the street that Agatha and Florence know, the minute they have gone
+by they say, 'She didn't look well to-day,' or, 'How pretty she did
+look in that new hat!' And after the great party they went to at
+that Miss Hitchler's, they never told a word about it except how
+girls 'looked.' I wonder what they _did_, or where the good time
+was. Seems to me people ain't living,--they are only just looking;
+or _is_ this the same old Boston that you told about, and where are
+the real folks, mother?"
+
+"We shall find them," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, cheerily; "and the real
+of these, too, when the outsides are settled. In the meantime, we'll
+make our house say, and not look. Say something true, of course.
+Things won't say anything else, you see; if you try to make them,
+they don't speak out; they only stand in a dumb show and make
+faces."
+
+"That's looking!" said Hazel. "Now I know."
+
+"How those children do grow!" said Mrs. Ripwinkley, as they went off
+together. "Two months ago they were sitting out on the kitchen roof,
+and coming to me to hear the old stories!"
+
+"Transplantin'," said Luclarion. "That's done it."
+
+At twelve and fourteen, Hazel and Diana could be simple as
+birds,--simpler yet, as human children waiting for all things,--in
+their country life and their little dreams of the world. Two months'
+contact with people and things in a great city had started the life
+that was in them, so that it showed what manner of growth it was to
+be of.
+
+And little Hazel Ripwinkley had got hold already of the small end of
+a very large problem.
+
+But she could not make it out that this was the same old Boston
+that her mother had told about, or where the nice neighbors were
+that would be likely to have little tea-parties for their children.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+EAVESDROPPING IN ASPEN STREET.
+
+
+Some of the old builders,--not the _very_ old ones, for they built
+nothing but rope-walks down behind the hill,--but some of those who
+began to go northwest from the State House to live, made a pleasant
+group of streets down there on the level stretching away to the
+river, and called them by fresh, fragrant, country-suggesting
+names. Names of trees and fields and gardens, fruits and blossoms;
+and they built houses with gardens around them. In between the
+blocks were deep, shady places; and the smell of flowers was tossed
+back and forth by summer winds between the walls. Some nice old
+people stayed on there, and a few of their descendants stay on there
+still, though they are built in closely now, for the most part, and
+coarse, common things have much intruded, and Summit Street
+overshadows them with its palaces.
+
+Here and there a wooden house, set back a little, like this of the
+Ripwinkleys in Aspen Street, gives you a feeling of Boston in the
+far back times, as you go by; and here and there, if you could get
+into the life of the neighborhood, you might perhaps find a
+household keeping itself almost untouched with change, though there
+has been such a rush and surge for years up and over into the newer
+and prouder places.
+
+At any rate, Titus Oldways lived here in Greenley Street; and he
+owned the Aspen Street house, and another over in Meadow Place, and
+another in Field Court. He meant to stretch his control over them as
+long as he could, and keep them for families; therefore he valued
+them at such rates as they would bring for dwellings; he would not
+sell or lease them for any kind of "improvements;" he would not have
+their little door-yards choked up, or their larger garden spaces
+destroyed, while he could help it.
+
+Round in Orchard Street lived Miss Craydocke. She was away again,
+now, staying a little while with the Josselyns in New York. Uncle
+Titus told Mrs. Ripwinkley that when Miss Craydocke came back it
+would be a neighborhood, and they could go round; now it was only
+back and forth between them and him and Rachel Froke. There were
+other people, too, but they would be longer finding them out.
+"You'll know Miss Craydocke as soon as you see her; she is one of
+those you always seem to have seen before."
+
+Now Uncle Titus would not have said this to everybody; not even if
+everybody had been his niece, and had come to live beside him.
+
+Orchard Street is wide and sunny and pleasant; the river air comes
+over it and makes it sweet; and Miss Craydocke's is a big, generous
+house, of which she only uses a very little part herself, because
+she lets the rest to nice people who want pleasant rooms and can't
+afford to pay much rent; an old gentleman who has had a hard time in
+the world, but has kept himself a gentleman through it all, and his
+little cheery old lady-wife who puts her round glasses on and
+stitches away at fine women's under-garments and flannel
+embroideries, to keep things even, have the two very best rooms; and
+a clergyman's widow, who copies for lawyers, and writes little
+stories for children, has another; and two orphan sisters who keep
+school have another; and Miss Craydocke calls her house the Beehive,
+and buzzes up and down in it, and out and in, on little "seeing-to"
+errands of care and kindness all day long, as never any queen-bee
+did in any beehive before, but in a way that makes her more truly
+queen than any sitting in the middle cell of state to be fed on
+royal jelly. Behind the Beehive, is a garden, as there should be;
+great patches of lily-of-the valley grow there that Miss Craydocke
+ties up bunches from in the spring and gives away to little
+children, and carries into all the sick rooms she knows of, and the
+poor places. I always think of those lilies of the valley when I
+think of Miss Craydocke. It seems somehow as if they were blooming
+about her all the year through; and so they are, perhaps, invisibly.
+The other flowers come in their season; the crocuses have been done
+with first of all; the gay tulips and the snowballs have made the
+children glad when they stopped at the gate and got them, going to
+school. Miss Craydocke is always out in her garden at school-time.
+By and by there are the tall white lilies, standing cool and serene
+in the July heats; then Miss Craydocke is away at the mountains,
+pressing ferns and drying grasses for winter parlors; but there is
+somebody on duty at the garden dispensary always, and there are
+flower-pensioners who know they may come in and take the gracious
+toll.
+
+Late in the autumn, the nasturtiums and verbenas and marigolds are
+bright; and the asters quill themselves into the biggest globes they
+can, of white and purple and rose, as if it were to make the last
+glory the best, and to do the very utmost of the year. Then the
+chrysanthemums go into the house and bloom there for Christmas-time.
+
+There is nothing else like Miss Craydocke's house and garden, I do
+believe, in all the city of the Three Hills. It is none too big for
+her, left alone with it, the last of her family; the world is none
+too big for her; she is glad to know it is all there. She has a use
+for everything as fast as it comes, and a work to do for everybody,
+as fast as she finds them out. And everybody,--almost,--catches it
+as she goes along, and around her there is always springing up a
+busy and a spreading crystallizing of shining and blessed elements.
+The world is none too big for her, or for any such, of course,
+because,--it has been told why better than I can tell it,--because
+"ten times one is always ten."
+
+It was a gray, gusty morning. It had not set in to rain
+continuously; but the wind wrung handfuls of drops suddenly from the
+clouds, and flung them against the panes and into the wayfarers'
+faces.
+
+Over in the house opposite the Ripwinkley's, at the second story
+windows, sat two busy young persons. Hazel, sitting at her window,
+in "mother's room," where each had a corner, could see across; and
+had got into the way of innocent watching. Up in Homesworth, she had
+used to watch the robins in the elm-trees; here, there was human
+life, in little human nests, all about her.
+
+"It's the same thing, mother," she would say, "isn't it, now? Don't
+you remember in that book of the 'New England Housekeeper,' that you
+used to have, what the woman said about the human nature of the
+beans? It's in beans, and birds, and bird's nests; and folks, and
+folks' nests. It don't make much difference. It's just snugness, and
+getting along. And it's so nice to see!"
+
+Hazel put her elbows up on the window-sill, and looked straight over
+into that opposite room, undisguisedly.
+
+The young man, in one window, said to his sister in the other, at
+the same moment,--
+
+"Our company's come! There's that bright little girl again!"
+
+And the sister said, "Well, it's pretty much all the company we can
+take in! She brings her own seat and her own window; and she doesn't
+interrupt. It's just the kind for us, Kentie!"
+
+"She's writing,--copying something,--music, it looks like; see it
+there, set up against the shutter. She always goes out with a music
+roll in her hand. I wonder whether she gives or takes?" said Diana,
+stopping on her way to her own seat to look out over Hazel's
+shoulder.
+
+"Both, I guess," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "Most people do. Why don't
+you put your flowers in the window, Hazel?"
+
+"Why, so I will!"
+
+They were a great bunch of snowy white and deep crimson asters, with
+green ivy leaves, in a tall gray glass vase. Rachel Froke had just
+brought them in from Miss Craydocke's garden.
+
+"They're looking, mother! Only I do think it's half too bad! That
+girl seems as if she would almost reach across after them. Perhaps
+they came from the country, and haven't had any flowers."
+
+"Thee might take them over some," said Mrs. Froke, simply.
+
+"O, I shouldn't dare! There are other people in the house, and I
+don't know their names, or anything. I wish I could, though."
+
+"I can," said Rachel Froke. "Thee'll grow tall enough to step over
+pebbles one of these days. Never mind; I'll fetch thee more
+to-morrow; and thee'll let the vase go for a while? Likely they've
+nothing better than a tumbler."
+
+Rachel Froke went down the stairs, and out along the paved walk,
+into the street. She stopped an instant on the curb-stone before she
+crossed, and looked up at those second story windows. Hazel watched
+her. She held up the vase slightly with one hand, nodding her little
+gray bonnet kindly, and beckoned with the other.
+
+The young girl started from her seat.
+
+In another minute Hazel saw them together in the doorway.
+
+There was a blush and a smile, and an eager brightness in the face,
+and a quick speaking thanks, that one could read without hearing,
+from the parted lips, on the one side, and the quiet, unflutterable
+gray bonnet calmly horizontal on the other; and then the door was
+shut, and Rachel Froke was crossing the damp pavement again.
+
+"I'm so glad Aspen Street is narrow!" said Hazel. "I should hate to
+be way off out of sight of people. What did you say to her, Mrs.
+Froke?" she asked, as the Friend reentered. Hazel could by no means
+take the awful liberty of "Rachel."
+
+"I said the young girl, Hazel Ripwinkley, being from the country,
+knew how good flowers were to strangers in the town, and that she
+thought they might be strange, and might like some."
+
+Hazel flushed all up. At that same instant, a gentle nod and smile
+came across from window to window, and she flushed more, till the
+tears sprung with the shy, glad excitement, as she returned it and
+then shrunk away.
+
+"And she said, 'Thank her, with Dorris Kincaid's love,'" proceeded
+Rachel Froke.
+
+"O, _mother_!" exclaimed Hazel. "And you did it all, right off so,
+Mrs. Froke. I don't see how grown up people dare, and know how!"
+
+Up the stairs ran quick feet in little clattering heeled boots.
+Desire Ledwith, with a purple waterproof on, came in.
+
+"I couldn't stay at home to-day," she said, "I wanted to be where
+it was all-togetherish. It never is at our house. Now it's set up,
+they don't do anything with it."
+
+"That's because it '_looks_'--so elegant," said Hazel, catching
+herself up in dismay.
+
+"It's because it's the crust, I think," said Desire. "Puff paste,
+like an oyster patty; and they haven't got anything cooked yet for
+the middle. I wonder when they will. I had a call yesterday, all to
+myself," she went on, with a sudden change of tone and topic.
+"Agatha was hopping and I wouldn't tell her what I said, or how I
+behaved. That new parlor girl of ours thinks we're all or any of us
+'Miss Ledwith,' mamma included, and so she let him in. He had on
+lavender pantaloons and a waxed moustache."
+
+"The rain is just pouring down!" said Diana, at the garden window.
+
+"Yes; I'm caught. That's what I meant," said Desire. "You've got to
+keep me all day, now. How will you get home, Mrs. Froke? Or won't
+you have to stay, too?"
+
+"Thee may call me Rachel, Desire Ledwith, if thee pleases. I like it
+better. I am no mistress. And for getting home, it is but just round
+the corner. But there is no need yet. I came for an hour, to sit
+here with friend Frances. And my hour is not yet up."
+
+"I'm glad of that, for there is something I want you to tell me. I
+haven't quite got at it myself, yet; so as to ask, I mean. Wait a
+minute!" And she put her elbows up on her knees, and held her thumbs
+against her ears, and her fingers across her forehead; sitting
+squarely opposite the window to which she had drawn up her chair
+beside Diane, and looking intently at the driving streams that
+rushed and ran down against the glass.
+
+"I was sitting in the bay-window at home, when it began this
+morning; that made me think. All the world dripping wet, and I just
+put there dry and safe in the middle of the storm, shut up behind
+those great clear panes and tight sashes. How they did have to
+contrive, and work, before there were such places made for people!
+What if they had got into their first scratchy little houses, and
+sat behind the logs as we do behind glass windows and thought, as I
+was thinking, how nice it was just to be covered up from the rain?
+Is it all finished now? Hasn't anybody got to contrive anything
+more? And who's going to do it--and everything. And what are we good
+for,--just _we_,--to come and expect it all, modern-improved! I
+don't think much of our place among things, do you, Mrs.
+Froke?--There, I believe that's it, as near as I can!'"
+
+"Why does thee ask me, Desire?"
+
+"I don't know. I don't know any whys or what fors. 'Behold we know
+not anything,'--Tennyson and I! But you seem so--pacified--I suppose
+I thought you must have settled most things in your mind."
+
+"Every builder--every little joiner--did his piece,--thought his
+thought out, I think likely. There's no little groove or moulding or
+fitting or finish, but is a bit of somebody's living; and life
+grows, going on. We've all got our piece to do," said Rachel.
+
+"I asked Mrs. Mig," Desire pursued, "and she said some people's part
+was to buy and employ and encourage; and that spending money helps
+all the world; and then she put another cushion to her back, and
+went on tatting."
+
+"Perhaps it does--in spite of the world," said Rachel Froke,
+quietly.
+
+"But I guess nobody is to sit by and _only_ encourage; God has
+given out no such portion as that, I do believe. We can encourage
+each other, and every one do his own piece too."
+
+"I didn't really suppose Mrs. Mig knew," said Desire, demurely. "She
+never began at the bottom of anything. She only finishes off. She
+buys pattern worsted work, and fills it in. That's what she's doing
+now, when she don't tat; a great bunch of white lilies, grounding it
+with olive. It's lovely; but I'd rather have made the lilies. She'll
+give it to mother, and then Glossy will come and spend the winter
+with us. Mrs. Mig is going to Nassau with a sick friend; she's
+awfully useful--for little overseeings and general touchings up,
+after all the hard part is done. Mrs. Mig's sick friends always have
+nurses and waiting maids--Mrs. F---- Rachel! Do you know, I haven't
+got any piece!"
+
+"No, I don't know; nor does thee either, yet," said Rachel Froke.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"It's all such bosh!" said Kenneth Kincaid, flinging down a handful
+of papers. "I've no right, I solemnly think, to help such stuff out
+into the world! A man can't take hold anywhere, it seems, without
+smutting his fingers!"
+
+Kenneth Kincaid was correcting proof for a publisher. What he had to
+work on this morning was the first chapters of a flimsy novel.
+
+"It isn't even confectionery," said he. "It's terra alba and
+cochineal. And when it comes to the sensation, it will be benzine
+for whiskey. Real things are bad enough, for the most part, in this
+world; but when it comes to sham fictions and adulterated poisons,
+Dorris, I'd rather help bake bread, if it were an honest loaf, or
+make strong shoes for laboring men!"
+
+"You don't always get things like that," said Dorris. "And you know
+you're not responsible. Why will you torment yourself so?"
+
+"I was so determined not to do anything but genuine work; work that
+the world wanted; and to have it come down to this!"
+
+"Only for a time, while you are waiting."
+
+"Yes; people must eat while they are waiting; that's the--devil of
+it! I'm not swearing, Dorris, dear; it came truly into my head, that
+minute, about the Temptation in the Wilderness." Kenneth's voice was
+reverent, saying this; and there was an earnest thought in his face.
+
+"You'll never like anything heartily but your Sunday work."
+
+"That's what keeps me here. My week-day work might be wanted
+somewhere else. And perhaps I ought to go. There's Sunday work
+everywhere."
+
+"If you've found one half, hold on to it;" said Dorris. "The other
+can't be far off."
+
+"I suppose there are a score or two of young architects in this
+city, waiting for a name or a chance to make one, as I am. If it
+isn't here for all of them, somebody has got to quit."
+
+"And somebody has got to hold on," repeated Dorris. "You are morbid,
+Kent, about this 'work of the world.'"
+
+"It's overdone, everywhere. Fifth wheels trying to hitch on to every
+coach. I'd rather be the one wheel of a barrow."
+
+"The Lord is Wheelwright, and Builder," said Dorris, very simply.
+"You _are_ a wheel, and He has made you; He'll find an axle for you
+and put you on; and you shall go about his business, so that you
+shall wonder to remember that you were ever leaning up against a
+wall. Do you know, Kentie, life seems to me like the game we used
+to play at home in the twilight. When we shut our eyes and let each
+other lead us, until we did not know where we were going, or in what
+place we should come out. I should not care to walk up a broad path
+with my eyes wide open, now. I'd rather feel the leading. To-morrow
+always makes a turn. It's beautiful! People don't know, who _never_
+shut their eyes!"
+
+Kenneth had taken up a newspaper.
+
+"The pretenses at doing! The dodges and go-betweens that make a sham
+work between every two real ones! There's hardly a true business
+carried on, and if there is, you don't know where or which. Look at
+the advertisements. Why, they cheat with their very tops and faces!
+See this man who puts in big capitals: 'Lost! $5,000! $1,000
+reward!' and then tells you, in small type, that five thousand
+dollars are lost every year by breaking glass and china, that his
+cement will mend! What business has he to cry 'Wolf!' to the
+hindrance of the next man who may have a real wolf to catch? And
+what business has the printer, whom the next man will pay to
+advertise his loss, to help on a lie like this beforehand? I'm only
+twenty-six years old, Dorris, and I'm getting ashamed of the world!"
+
+"Don't grow hard, Kenneth. 'The Son of Man came not to condemn the
+world, but to save it.' Let's each try to save our little piece!"
+
+We are listening across the street, you see; between the windows in
+the rain; it is strange what chords one catches that do not catch
+each other, and were never planned to be played together,--by the
+_players_.
+
+Kenneth Kincaid's father Robert had been a ship-builder. When
+shipping went down in the whirlpool of 1857, Robert Kincaid's
+building had gone; and afterward he had died leaving his children
+little beside their education, which he thanked God was secured, and
+a good repute that belonged to their name, but was easily forgotten
+in the crowd of young and forward ones, and in the strife and
+scramble of a new business growth.
+
+Between college and technical studies Kenneth had been to the war.
+After that he had a chance to make a fortune in Wall Street. His
+father's brother, James, offered to take him in with him to buy and
+sell stocks and gold, to watch the market, to touch little unseen
+springs, to put the difference into his own pocket every time the
+tide of value shifted, or could be made to seem to shift. He might
+have been one of James R. Kincaid and Company. He would have none of
+it. He told his uncle plainly that he wanted real work; that he had
+not come back from fighting to--well, there he stopped, for he could
+not fling the truth in his uncle's face; he said there were things
+he meant to finish learning, and would try to do; and if nobody
+wanted them of him he would learn something else that was needed. So
+with what was left to his share from his father's little remnant of
+property, he had two years at the Technological School, and here he
+was in Boston waiting. You can see what he meant by real work, and
+how deep his theories and distinctions lay. You can see that it
+might be a hard thing for one young man, here or there, to take up
+the world on these terms now, in this year of our Lord eighteen
+hundred and sixty-nine.
+
+Over the way Desire Ledwith was beginning again, after a pause in
+which we have made our little chassée.
+
+"I know a girl," she said, "who has got a studio. And she talks
+about art, and she knows styles, and who has done what, and she runs
+about to see pictures, and she copies things, and she has little
+plaster legs and toes and things hanging round everywhere. She
+thinks it is something great; but it's only Mig, after all.
+Everything is. Florence Migs into music. And I won't Mig, if I never
+do anything. I'm come here this morning to darn stockings." And she
+pulled out of her big waterproof pocket a bundle of stockings and a
+great white ball of darning cotton and a wooden egg.
+
+"There is always one thing that is real," said Mrs. Ripwinkley,
+gently, "and that shows the way surely to all the rest."
+
+"I know what you mean," said Desire, "of course; but they've mixed
+that all up too, like everything else, so that you don't know where
+it is. Glossy Megilp has a velvet prayer-book, and she blacks her
+eyelashes and goes to church. We've all been baptized, and we've
+learned the Lord's Prayer, and we're all Christians. What is there
+more about it? I wish, sometimes, they had let it all alone. I think
+they vaccinated us with religion, Aunt Frank, for fear we should
+take it the natural way."
+
+"Thee is restless," said Rachel Froke, tying on her gray cloak. "And
+to make us so is oftentimes the first thing the Lord does for us. It
+was the first thing He did for the world. Then He said, 'Let there
+be light!' In the meantime, thee is right; just darn thy stockings."
+And Rachel went.
+
+They had a nice morning, after that, "leaving frets alone," as Diana
+said. Diana Ripwinkley was happy in things just as they were. If the
+sun shone, she rejoiced in the glory; if the rain fell, it shut her
+in sweetly to the heart of home, and the outside world grew fragrant
+for her breathing. There was never anything in her day that she
+could spare out of it, and there were no holes in the hours either.
+"Whether she was most bird or bee, it was hard to tell," her mother
+said of her; from the time she used to sweep and dust her garret
+baby-house along the big beams in the old house at Homesworth, and
+make little cheeses, and set them to press in wooden pill-boxes from
+which she had punched the bottoms out, till now, that she began to
+take upon herself the daily freshening of the new parlors in Aspen
+Street, and had long lessons of geometry to learn, whose dry
+demonstrations she set to odd little improvised recitatives of
+music, and chanted over while she ran up and down putting away clean
+linen for her mother, that Luclarion brought up from the wash.
+
+As for Hazel, she was only another variation upon the same sweet
+nature. There was more of outgo and enterprise with her. Diana made
+the thing or the place pleasant that she was in or doing. Hazel
+sought out new and blessed inventions. "There was always something
+coming to the child that wouldn't ever have come to no one else,"
+Luclarion said. "And besides that, she was a real 'Witch Hazel;' she
+could tell where the springs were, and what's more, where they
+warn't."
+
+Luclarion Grapp would never have pleaded guilty to "dropping into
+poetry" in any light whatsoever; but what she meant by this was not
+exactly according to the letter, as one may easily see.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+HAZEL'S INSPIRATION.
+
+
+What was the use of "looking," unless things were looked at? Mrs.
+Ledwith found at the end of the winter that she ought to give a
+party. Not a general one; Mrs. Ledwith always said "not a general
+one," as if it were an exception, whereas she knew better than ever
+to undertake a general party; her list would be _too_ general, and
+heterogeneous. It would simply be a physical, as well as a social,
+impossibility. She knew quantities of people separately and very
+cordially, in her easy have-a-good-time-when-you-can style, that she
+could by no means mix, or even gather together. She picked up
+acquaintances on summer journeys, she accepted civilities wherever
+she might be, she asked everybody to her house who took a fancy to
+her, or would admire her establishment, and if she had had a spring
+cleaning or a new carpeting, or a furbishing up in any way, the next
+thing was always to light up and play it off,--to try it on to
+somebody. What were houses for? And there was always somebody who
+ought to be paid attention to; somebody staying with a friend, or a
+couple just engaged, or if nothing else, it was her turn to have the
+sewing-society; and so her rooms got aired. Of course she had to air
+them now! The drawing-room, with its apricot and coffee-brown
+furnishings, was lovely in the evening, and the crimson and garnet
+in the dining-room was rich and cozy, and set off brilliantly her
+show of silver and cut-glass; and then, there was the new, real,
+sea-green China.
+
+So the party was had. There were some people in town from New York;
+she invited them and about a hundred more. The house lit up
+beautifully; the only pity was that Mrs. Ledwith could not wear her
+favorite and most becoming colors, buff and chestnut, because she
+had taken that family of tints for her furniture; but she found a
+lovely shade of violet that would hold by gas-light, and she wore
+black Fayal lace with it, and white roses upon her hair. Mrs.
+Treweek was enchanted with the brown and apricot drawing-room, and
+wondered where on earth they had got that particular shade, for "my
+dear! she had ransacked Paris for hangings in just that perfect,
+soft, ripe color that she had in her mind and never could hit upon."
+Mrs. MacMichael had pushed the grapes back upon her plate to examine
+the pattern of the bit of china, and had said how lovely the
+coloring was, with the purple and pale green of the fruit. And these
+things, and a few more like them, were the residuum of the whole,
+and Laura Ledwith was satisfied.
+
+Afterward, "while they were in the way of it," Florence had a little
+_musicale_; and the first season in Shubarton Place was over.
+
+It turned out, however, as it did in the old rhyme,--they shod the
+horse, and shod the mare, and let the little colt go bare. Helena
+was disgusted because she could not have a "German."
+
+"We shall have to be careful, now that we have fairly settled down,"
+said Laura to her sister; "for every bit of Grant's salary will have
+been taken up with this winter's expenses. But one wants to begin
+right, and after that one can go on moderately. I'm good at
+contriving, Frank; only give me something to contrive with."
+
+"Isn't it a responsibility," Frank ventured, "to think what we shall
+contrive _for_?"
+
+"Of course," returned Mrs. Ledwith, glibly. "And my first duty is
+to my children. I don't mean to encourage them to reckless
+extravagance; as Mrs. Megilp says, there's always a limit; but it's
+one's duty to make life beautiful, and one can't do too much for
+home. I want my children to be satisfied with theirs, and I want to
+cultivate their tastes and accustom them to society. I can't do
+_everything_ for them; they will dress on three hundred a year
+apiece, Agatha and Florence; and I can assure you it needs
+management to accomplish that, in these days!"
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley laughed, gently.
+
+"It would require management with us to get rid of that, upon
+ourselves."
+
+"O, my dear, don't I tell you continually, you haven't waked up yet?
+Just rub your eyes a while longer,--or let the girls do it for
+you,--and you'll see! Why, I know of girls,--girls whose mothers
+have limited incomes, too,--who have been kept plain, actually
+_plain_, all their school days, but who must have now six and eight
+hundred a year to go into society with. And really I wouldn't
+undertake it for less, myself, if I expected to keep up with
+everything. But I must treat mine all alike, and we must be
+contented with what we have. There's Helena, now, crazy for a young
+party; but I couldn't think of it. Young parties are ten times worse
+than old ones; there's really no _end_ to the expense, with the
+German, and everything. Helena will have to wait; and yet,--of
+course, if I could, it is desirable, almost necessary; acquaintances
+begin in the school-room,--society, indeed; and a great deal would
+depend upon it. The truth is, you're no sooner born, now-a-days,
+than you have to begin to keep up; or else--you're dropped out."
+
+"O, Laura! do you remember the dear little parties our mother used
+to make for us? From four till half-past eight, with games, and tea
+at six, and the fathers looking in?"
+
+"And cockles, and mottoes, and printed cambric dresses, and milk and
+water! Where are the children, do you suppose, you dear old Frau Van
+Winkle, that would come to such a party now?"
+
+"Children must be born simple, as they were then. There's nothing my
+girls would like better, even at their age, than to help at just
+such a party. It is a dream of theirs. Why shouldn't somebody do it,
+just to show how good it is?"
+
+"You can lead a horse to water, you know, Frank, but you can't make
+him drink. And the colts are forty times worse. I believe you might
+get some of the mothers together for an ancient tea-drink, just in
+the name of old association; but the _babies_ would all turn up
+their new-fashioned little noses."
+
+"O, dear!" sighed Frau Van Winkle. "I wish I knew people!"
+
+"By the time you do, you'll know the reason why, and be like all the
+rest."
+
+Hazel Ripwinkley went to Mrs. Hilman's school, with her cousin
+Helena. That was because the school was a thoroughly good one; the
+best her mother could learn of; not because it was kept in parlors
+in Dorset Street, and there were girls there who came from palaces
+west of the Common, in the grand avenues and the ABC streets; nor
+did Hazel wear her best gray and black velvet suit for every day,
+though the rich colored poplins with their over-skirts and sashes,
+and the gay ribbons for hair and neck made the long green baize
+covered tables look like gardenplots with beds of bloom, and quite
+extinguished with their brilliancy the quiet, one skirted brown
+merino that she brushed and folded every night, and put on with
+fresh linen cuffs and collar every morning.
+
+"It is an idiosyncrasy of Aunt Frances," Helena explained, with the
+grandest phrase she could pick out of her "Synonymes," to cow down
+those who "wondered."
+
+Privately, Helena held long lamentations with Hazel, going to and
+fro, about the party that she could not have.
+
+"I'm actually ashamed to go to school. There isn't a girl there, who
+can pretend to have anything, that hasn't had some kind of a company
+this winter. I've been to them all, and I feel real mean,--sneaky.
+What's 'next year?' Mamma puts me off with that. Poh? Next year
+they'll all begin again. You can't skip birthdays."
+
+"I'll tell you what!" said Hazel, suddenly, inspired by much the
+same idea that had occurred to Mrs. Ripwinkley; "I mean to ask my
+mother to let _me_ have a party!"
+
+"You! Down in Aspen Street! Don't, for pity's sake, Hazel!"
+
+"I don't believe but what it could be done over again!" said Hazel,
+irrelevantly, intent upon her own thought.
+
+"It couldn't be done _once_! For gracious grandmother's sake, don't
+think of it!" cried the little world-woman of thirteen.
+
+"It's gracious grandmother's sake that made me think of it," said
+Hazel, laughing. "The way she used to do."
+
+"Why don't you ask them to help you hunt up old Noah, and all get
+back into the ark, pigeons and all?"
+
+"Well, I guess they had pretty nice times there, any how; and if
+another big rain comes, perhaps they'll have to!"
+
+Hazel did not intend her full meaning; but there is many a faint,
+small prophecy hid under a clover-leaf.
+
+Hazel did not let go things; her little witch-wand, once pointed,
+held its divining angle with the might of magic until somebody broke
+ground.
+
+"It's awful!" Helena declared to her mother and sisters, with tears
+of consternation. "And she wants me to go round with her and carry
+'compliments!' It'll never be got over,--never! I wish I could go
+away to boarding-school!"
+
+For Mrs. Ripwinkley had made up her unsophisticated mind to try this
+thing; to put this grain of a pure, potent salt, right into the
+seethe and glitter of little Boston, and find out what it would
+decompose or precipitate. For was not she a mother, testing the
+world's chalice for her children? What did she care for the hiss and
+the bubble, if they came?
+
+She was wider awake than Mrs. Ledwith knew; perhaps they who come
+down from the mountain heights of long seclusion can measure the
+world's paces and changes better than they who have been hurried in
+the midst of them, on and on, or round and round.
+
+Worst of all, old Uncle Titus took it up.
+
+It was funny,--or it would have been funny, reader, if anybody but
+you and I and Rachel Froke knew exactly how,--to watch Uncle Titus
+as he kept his quiet eye on all these things,--the things that he
+had set going,--and read their revelations; sheltered, disguised,
+under a character that the world had chosen to put upon him, like
+Haroun Alraschid in the merchant's cloak.
+
+They took their tea with him,--the two families,--every Sunday
+night. Agatha Ledwith "filled him in" a pair of slippers that very
+first Christmas; he sat there in the corner with his old leather
+ones on, when they came, and left them, for the most part, to their
+own mutual entertainment, until the tea was ready. It was a sort of
+family exchange; all the plans and topics came up, particularly on
+the Ledwith side, for Mrs. Ripwinkley was a good listener, and Laura
+a good talker; and the fun,--that you and I and Rachel Froke could
+guess,--yes, and a good deal of unsuspected earnest, also,--was all
+there behind the old gentleman's "Christian Age," as over brief
+mentions of sermons, or words about books, or little brevities of
+family inquiries and household news, broke small floods of
+excitement like water over pebbles, as Laura and her daughters
+discussed and argued volubly the matching and the flouncing of a
+silk, or the new flowering and higher pitching of a bonnet,--since
+"they are wearing everything all on the top, you know, and mine
+looks terribly meek;" or else descanted diffusely on the
+unaccountableness of the somebodies not having called, or the bother
+and forwardness of the some-other-bodies who had, and the
+eighty-three visits that were left on the list to be paid, and
+"never being able to take a day to sit down for anything."
+
+"What is it all for?" Mrs. Ripwinkley would ask, over again, the
+same old burden of the world's weariness falling upon her from her
+sister's life, and making her feel as if it were her business to
+clear it away somehow.
+
+"Why, to live!" Mrs. Ledwith would reply. "You've got it all to do,
+you see."
+
+"But I don't really see, Laura, where the living comes in."
+
+Laura opens her eyes.
+
+"_Slang_?" says she. "Where did you get hold of that?"
+
+"Is it slang? I'm sure I don't know. I mean it."
+
+"Well, you _are_ the funniest! You don't _catch_ anything. Even a
+by-word must come first-hand from you, and mean something!"
+
+"It seems to me such a hard-working, getting-ready-to-be, and then
+not being. There's no place left for it,--because it's all place."
+
+"Gracious me, Frank! If you are going to sift everything so, and get
+back of everything! I can't live in metaphysics: I have to live in
+the things themselves, amongst other people."
+
+"But isn't it scene and costume, a good deal of it, without the
+play? It may be that I don't understand, because I have not got into
+the heart of your city life; but what comes of the parties, for
+instance? The grand question, beforehand, is about wearing, and then
+there's a retrospection of what was worn, and how people looked. It
+seems to be all surface. I should think they might almost send in
+their best gowns, or perhaps a photograph,--if photographs ever were
+becoming,--as they do visiting cards."
+
+"Aunt Frank," said Desire, "I don't believe the 'heart of city life'
+is in the parties, or the parlors. I believe there's a great lot of
+us knocking round amongst the dry goods and the furniture that never
+get any further. People must be _living_, somewhere, _behind_ the
+fixings. But there are so many people, nowadays, that have never
+quite got fixed!"
+
+"You might live all your days here," said Mrs. Ledwith to her
+sister, passing over Desire, "and never get into the heart of it,
+for that matter, unless you were born into it. I don't care so much,
+for my part. I know plenty of nice people, and I like to have things
+nice about me, and to have a pleasant time, and to let my children
+enjoy themselves. The 'heart,' if the truth was known, is a
+dreadful still place. I'm satisfied."
+
+Uncle Titus's paper was folded across the middle; just then he
+reversed the lower half; that brought the printing upside down; but
+he went on reading all the same.
+
+"_I_'m going to have a real party," said Hazel, "a real,
+gracious-grandmother party; just such as you and mother had, Aunt
+Laura, when you were little."
+
+Her Aunt Laura laughed good-naturedly.
+
+"I guess you'll have to go round and knock up the grandmothers to
+come to it, then," said she. "You'd better make it a fancy dress
+affair at once, and then it will be accounted for."
+
+"No; I'm going round to invite; and they are to come at four, and
+take tea at six; and they're just to wear their afternoon dresses;
+and Miss Craydocke is coming at any rate; and she knows all the old
+plays, and lots of new ones; and she is going to show how."
+
+"I'm coming, too," said Uncle Titus, over his newspaper, with his
+eyes over his glasses.
+
+"That's good," said Hazel, simply, least surprised of any of the
+conclave.
+
+"And you'll have to play the muffin man. 'O, don't you know,'"--she
+began to sing, and danced two little steps toward Mr. Oldways. "O, I
+forgot it was Sunday!" she said, suddenly stopping.
+
+"Not much wonder," said Uncle Titus. "And not much matter. _Your_
+Sunday's good enough."
+
+And then he turned his paper right side up; but, before he began
+really to read again, he swung half round toward them in his
+swivel-chair, and said,--
+
+"Leave the sugar-plums to me, Hazel; I'll come early and bring 'em
+in my pocket."
+
+"It's the first thing he's taken the slightest notice of, or
+interest in, that any one of us has been doing," said Agatha
+Ledwith, with a spice of momentary indignation, as they walked along
+Bridgeley Street to take the car.
+
+For Uncle Titus had not come to the Ledwith party. "He never went
+visiting, and he hadn't any best coat," he told Laura, in verbal
+reply to the invitation that had come written on a square satin
+sheet, once folded, in an envelope with a big monogram.
+
+"It's of no consequence," said Mrs. Ledwith, "any way. Only a
+child's play."
+
+"But it will be, mother; you don't know," said Helena. "She's going
+right in everywhere, with that ridiculous little invitation; to the
+Ashburnes and the Geoffreys, and all! She hasn't the least idea of
+any difference; and just think what the girls will say, and how they
+will stare, and laugh! I wish she wasn't my cousin!"
+
+"Helena!"
+
+Mrs. Ledwith spoke with real displeasure; for she was good-natured
+and affectionate in her way; and her worldly ambitions were rather
+wide than high, as we have seen.
+
+"Well, I can't help it; you don't know, mother," Helena repeated.
+"It's horrid to go to school with all those stiffies, that don't
+care a snap for you, and only laugh."
+
+"Laughing is vulgar," said Agatha. If any indirect question were
+ever thrown upon the family position, Agatha immediately began
+expounding the ethics of high breeding, as one who had attained.
+
+"It is only half-way people who laugh," she said. "Ada Geoffrey and
+Lilian Ashburne never laugh--_at_ anybody--I am sure."
+
+"No, they don't; not right out. They're awfully polite. But you can
+feel it, underneath. They have a way of keeping so still, when you
+know they would laugh if they did anything."
+
+"Well, they'll neither laugh nor keep still, about this. You need
+not be concerned. They'll just not go, and that will be the end of
+it."
+
+Agatha Ledwith was mistaken. She had been mistaken about two things
+to-night. The other was when she had said that this was the first
+time Uncle Oldways had noticed or been interested in anything they
+did.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+COCKLES AND CRAMBO.
+
+
+Hazel Ripwinkley put on her nankeen sack and skirt, and her little
+round, brown straw hat. For May had come, and almost gone, and it
+was a day of early summer warmth.
+
+Hazel's dress was not a "suit;" it had been made and worn two
+summers before suits were thought of; yet it suited very well, as
+people's things are apt to do, after all, who do not trouble
+themselves about minutiæ of fashion, and so get no particular
+antediluvian marks upon them that show when the flood subsides.
+
+Her mother knew some things that Hazel did not. Mrs. Ripwinkley, if
+she had been asleep for five and twenty years, had lost none of her
+perceptive faculties in the trance. But she did not hamper her child
+with any doubts; she let her go on her simple way, under the shield
+of her simplicity, to test this world that she had come into, for
+herself.
+
+Hazel had written down her little list of the girls' names that she
+would like to ask; and Mrs. Ripwinkley looked at it with a smile.
+There was Ada Geoffrey, the banker's daughter, and Lilian Ashburne,
+the professor's,--heiresses each, of double lines of birth and
+wealth. She could remember how, in her childhood, the old names
+sounded, with the respect that was in men's tones when they were
+spoken; and underneath were Lois James and Katie Kilburnie, children
+of a printer and a hatter. They had all been chosen for their purely
+personal qualities. A child, let alone, chooses as an angel chooses.
+
+It remained to be seen how they would come together.
+
+At the very head, in large, fair letters, was,--
+
+          "MISS CRAYDOCKE."
+
+Down at the bottom, she had just added,--
+
+          "MR. KINCAID AND DORRIS."
+
+"For, if I have _some_ grown folks, mother, perhaps I ought to have
+_other_ grown folks,--'to keep the balance true.' Besides, Mr.
+Kincaid and Dorris always like the _little_ nice times."
+
+From the day when Dorris Kincaid had come over with the gray glass
+vase and her repeated thanks, when the flowers had done their
+ministry and faded, there had been little simple courtesies, each
+way, between the opposite houses; and once Kenneth and his sister
+had taken tea with the Ripwinkleys, and they had played "crambo"
+and "consequences" in the evening. The real little game of
+"consequences," of which this present friendliness was a link, was
+going on all the time, though they did not stop to read the lines as
+they folded them down, and "what the world said" was not one of the
+items in their scheme of it at all.
+
+It would have been something worth while to have followed Hazel as
+she went her rounds, asking quietly at each house to see Mrs. This
+or That, "as she had a message;" and being shown, like a little
+representative of an almost extinct period, up into the parlor, or
+the dressing-room of each lady, and giving her quaint errand.
+
+"I am Hazel Ripwinkley," she would say, "and my mother sends her
+compliments, and would like to have Lilian,"--or whoever
+else,--"come at four o'clock to-day, and spend the afternoon and
+take tea. I'm to have a little party such as she used to have, and
+nobody is to be much dressed up, and we are only to play games."
+
+"Why, that is charming!" cried Mrs. Ashburne; for the feeling of
+her own sweet early days, and the old B---- Square house, came over
+her as she heard the words. "It is Lilian's music afternoon; but
+never mind; give my kind compliments to your mother, and she will be
+very happy to come."
+
+And Mrs. Ashburne stooped down and kissed Hazel, when she went away.
+
+She stood in the deep carved stone entrance-way to Mrs. Geoffrey's
+house, in the same fearless, Red Riding Hood fashion, just as she
+would have waited in any little country porch up in Homesworth,
+where she had need indeed to knock.
+
+Not a whit dismayed was she either, when the tall manservant opened
+to her, and admitted her into the square, high, marble-paved hall,
+out of which great doors were set wide into rooms rich and quiet
+with noble adorning and soft shading,--where pictures made such a
+magic upon the walls, and books were piled from floor to ceiling;
+and where her little figure was lost as she went in, and she
+hesitated to take a seat anywhere, lest she should be quite hidden
+in some great arm-chair or sofa corner, and Mrs. Geoffrey should not
+see her when she came down.
+
+So, as the lady entered, there she was, upright and waiting, on her
+two feet, in her nankeen dress, just within the library doors, with
+her face turned toward the staircase.
+
+"I am Hazel Ripwinkley," she began; as if she had said, I am
+Pease-blossom or Mustard-seed; "I go to school with Ada." And went
+on, then, with her compliments and her party. And at the end she
+said, very simply,--
+
+"Miss Craydocke is coming, and she knows the games."
+
+"Miss Craydocke, of Orchard Street? And where do you live?"
+
+"In Aspen Street, close by, in Uncle Oldways' house. We haven't
+lived there very long,--only this winter; before that we always
+lived in Homesworth."
+
+"And Homesworth is in the country? Don't you miss that?"
+
+"Yes; but Aspen Street isn't very bad; we've got a garden. Besides,
+we like streets and neighbors."
+
+Then she added,--for her little witch-stick felt spiritually the
+quality of what she spoke to,--"Wouldn't Mr. Geoffrey come for Ada
+in the evening?"
+
+"I haven't the least doubt he would!" said Mrs. Geoffrey, her face
+all alive with exquisite and kindly amusement, and catching the
+spirit of the thing from the inimitable simplicity before her, such
+as never, she did believe, had walked into anybody's house before,
+in this place and generation, and was no more to be snubbed than a
+flower or a breeze or an angel.
+
+It was a piece of Witch Hazel's witchery, or inspiration, that she
+named Miss Craydocke; for Miss Craydocke was an old, dear friend of
+Mrs. Geoffrey's, in that "heart of things" behind the fashions,
+where the kingdom is growing up. But of course Hazel could not have
+known that; something in the lady's face just made her think of the
+same thing in Miss Craydocke's, and so she spoke, forgetting to
+explain, nor wondering in the very least, when she was met with
+knowledge.
+
+It was all divining, though, from the beginning to the end. That was
+what took her into these homes, rather than to a score of other
+places up and down the self-same streets, where, if she had got in
+at all, she would have met strange, lofty stares, and freezing
+"thank you's," and "engagements."
+
+"I've found the real folks, mother, and they're all coming!" she
+cried, joyfully, running in where Mrs. Ripwinkley was setting little
+vases and baskets about on shelf and table, between the white,
+plain, muslin draperies of the long parlor windows. In vases and
+baskets were sweet May flowers; bunches of deep-hued, rich-scented
+violets, stars of blue and white periwinkle, and Miss Craydocke's
+lilies of the valley in their tall, cool leaves; each kind gathered
+by itself in clusters and handfuls. Inside the wide, open fireplace,
+behind the high brass fender and the shining andirons, was a
+"chimney flower pot," country fashion, of green lilac boughs,--not
+blossoms,--and woodbine sprays, and crimson and white tulips. The
+room was fair and fragrant, and the windows were wide open upon
+vines and grass.
+
+"It looks like you, mother, just as Mrs. Geoffrey's house looks like
+her. Houses ought to look like people, I think."
+
+"There's your surprise, children. We shouldn't be doing it right
+without a surprise, you know."
+
+And the surprise was not dolls' pelerines, but books. "Little Women"
+was one, which sent Diana and Hazel off for a delicious two hours'
+read up in their own room until dinner.
+
+After dinner, Miss Craydocke came, in her purple and white striped
+mohair and her white lace neckerchief; and at three o'clock Uncle
+Titus walked in, with his coat pockets so bulgy and rustling and
+odorous of peppermint and sassafras, that it was no use to pretend
+to wait and be unconscious, but a pure mercy to unload him so that
+he might be able to sit down.
+
+Nobody knows to this day where he got them; he must have ordered
+them somewhere, one would think, long enough before to have special
+moulds and implements made; but there were large, beautiful
+cockles,--not of the old flour-paste sort, but of clear, sparkling
+sugar, rose-color, and amber, and white, with little slips of tinted
+paper tucked within, and these printed delicately with pretty rhymes
+and couplets, from real poets; things to be truly treasured, yet
+simple, for children's apprehension, and fancy, and fun. And there
+were "Salem gibraltars," such as we only get out of Essex County now
+and then, for a big charitable Fair, when Salem and everywhere else
+gets its spirit up to send its best and most especial; and there
+were toys and devices in sugar--flowers and animals, hats, bonnets,
+and boots, apples, and cucumbers,--such as Diana and Hazel, and even
+Desire and Helena had never seen before.
+
+"It isn't quite fair," said good Miss Craydocke. "We were to go back
+to the old, simple fashions of things; and here you are beginning
+over again already with sumptuous inventions. It's the very way it
+came about before, till it was all spoilt."
+
+"No," said Uncle Titus, stoutly. "It's only 'Old _and_ New,'--the
+very selfsame good old notions brought to a little modern
+perfection. They're not French flummery, either; and there's not a
+drop of gin, or a flavor of prussic acid, or any other abominable
+chemical, in one of those contrivances. They're as innocent as they
+look; good honest mint and spice and checkerberry and lemon and
+rose. I know the man that made 'em!"
+
+Helena Ledwith began to think that the first person, singular or
+plural, might have a good time; but that awful third! Helena's
+"they" was as potent and tremendous as her mother's.
+
+"It's nice," she said to Hazel; "but they don't have inch things. I
+never saw them at a party. And they don't play games; they always
+dance. And it's broad, hot daylight; and--you haven't asked a single
+boy!"
+
+"Why, I don't know any! Only Jimmy Scarup; and I guess he'd rather
+play ball, and break windows!"
+
+"Jimmy Scarup!" And Helena turned away, hopeless of Hazel's
+comprehending.
+
+But "they" came; and "they" turned right into "we."
+
+It was not a party; it was something altogether fresh and new; the
+house was a new, beautiful place; it was like the country. And Aspen
+Street, when you got down there, was so still and shady and sweet
+smelling and pleasant. They experienced the delight of finding out
+something.
+
+Miss Craydocke and Hazel set them at it,--their good time; they had
+planned it all out, and there was no stiff, shy waiting. They began,
+right off, with the "Muffin Man." Hazel danced up to Desire:--
+
+          "O, _do_ you know the Muffin Man,
+            The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man?
+          O, _do_ you know the Muffin Man
+            That lives in Drury Lane?"
+
+          "O, yes, I know the Muffin Man,
+            The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man,
+          O, yes, I know the Muffin Man
+            That lives in Drury Lane."
+
+And so they danced off together:--
+
+          "Two of us know the Muffin Man,
+            The Muffin Man, the Muffin Man,
+          Two of us know the Muffin Man
+            That lives in Drury Lane."
+
+And then they besieged Miss Craydocke; and then the three met Ada
+Geoffrey, just as she had come in and spoken to Diana and Mrs.
+Ripwinkley; and Ada had caught the refrain, and responded instantly;
+and _four_ of them knew the Muffin Man.
+
+"I know they'll think it's common and queer, and they'll laugh
+to-morrow," whispered Helena to Diana, as Hazel drew the lengthening
+string to Dorris Kincaid's corner and caught her up; but the next
+minute they were around Helena in her turn, and they were laughing
+already, with pure glee; and five faces bent toward her, and five
+voices sang,--
+
+          "O, _don't_ you know the Muffin Man?"
+
+And Helena had to sing back that she did; and then the six made a
+perfect snarl around Mrs. Ripwinkley herself, and drew her in; and
+then they all swept off and came down across the room upon Mr.
+Oldways, who muttered, under the singing, "seven women! Well, the
+Bible says so, and I suppose it's come!" and then he held out both
+hands, while his hard face unbent in every wrinkle, with a smile
+that overflowed through all their furrowed channels, up to his very
+eyes; like some sparkling water that must find its level; and there
+were eight that knew the Muffin Man.
+
+So nine, and ten, and up to fifteen; and then, as their line broke
+away into fragments, still breathless with fun, Miss Craydocke
+said,--her eyes brimming over with laughing tears, that always came
+when she was gay,--
+
+"There, now! we all know the 'Muffin Man;' therefore it follows,
+mathematically, I believe, that we must all know each other. I think
+we'll try a sitting-down game next. I'll give you all something.
+Desire, you can tell them what to do with it, and Miss Ashburne
+shall predict me consequences."
+
+So they had the "Presentation Game;" and the gifts, and the
+dispositions, and the consequences, when the whispers were over, and
+they were all declared aloud, were such hits and jumbles of sense
+and nonsense as were almost too queer to have been believed.
+
+"Miss Craydocke gave me a butter firkin," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "I
+was to put it in the parlor and plant vanilla beans in it; and the
+consequence would be that Birnam Wood would come to Dunsinane."
+
+"She gave me a wax doll," said Helena. "I was to buy it a pair of
+high-heeled boots and a chignon; and the consequence would be that
+she would have to stand on her head."
+
+"She gave me," said Mr. Oldways, "an iron spoon. I was to deal out
+sugar-plums with it; and the consequence would be that you would all
+go home."
+
+"She gave me," said Lois James, "Woman's Rights. I shouldn't know
+what to do with them; and the consequence would be a terrible
+mortification to all my friends."
+
+"She gave me," said Hazel, "a real good time. I was to pass it
+round; and the consequence would be an earthquake."
+
+Then they had "Scandal;" a whisper, repeated rapidly from ear to
+ear. It began with, "Luclarion is in the kitchen making
+tea-biscuits;" and it ended with the horrible announcement that
+there were "two hundred gallons of hot pitch ready, and that
+everybody was to be tipped into it."
+
+"Characters," and "Twenty Questions," and "How, When, and Where,"
+followed; and then they were ready for a run again, and they played
+"Boston," in which Mr. Oldways, being "Sceattle," was continually
+being left out, whereupon he declared at last, that he didn't
+believe there was any place for him, or even that he was down
+anywhere on the map, and it wasn't fair, and he was going to secede;
+and that broke up the play; for the groat fun of all the games had
+come to be Miss Craydocke and Uncle Titus, as it always is the great
+fun to the young ones when the elders join in,--the older and the
+soberer, the better sport; there is always something in the "fathers
+looking on;" that is the way I think it is among them who always do
+behold the Face of the Father in heaven,--smiling upon their smiles,
+glowing upon their gladness.
+
+In the tea-room, it was all even more delightful yet; it was further
+out into the garden, shaded at the back by the deep leafiness of
+grape-vines, and a trellis work with arches in it that ran up at the
+side, and would be gay by and by with scarlet runners, and
+morning-glories, and nasturtiums, that were shooting up strong and
+swift already, from the neatly weeded beds.
+
+Inside, was the tall old semicircular sideboard, with gingerbread
+grooves carved all over it; and the real brass "dogs," with heads on
+their fore-paws, were lying in the fire-place, under the lilac
+boughs; and the square, plain table stood in the midst, with its
+glossy white cloth that touched the floor at the corners, and on it
+were the identical pink mugs, and a tall glass pitcher of milk, and
+plates of the thinnest and sweetest bread and butter, and early
+strawberries in a white basket lined with leaves, and the
+traditional round frosted cakes upon a silver plate with a network
+rim.
+
+And Luclarion and Mrs. Ripwinkley waited upon them all, and it was
+still no party, to be compared or thought of with any salad and
+ice-pudding and Germania-band affair, such as they had had all
+winter; but something utterly fresh and new and by itself,--place,
+and entertainment, and people, and all.
+
+After tea, they went out into the garden; and there, under the shady
+horse-chestnuts, was a swing; and there were balls with which Hazel
+showed them how to play "class;" tossing in turn against the high
+brick wall, and taking their places up and down, according to the
+number of their catches. It was only Miss Craydocke's "Thread the
+Needle" that got them in again; and after that, she showed them
+another simple old dancing game, the "Winding Circle," from which
+they were all merrily and mysteriously untwisting themselves with
+Miss Craydocke's bright little thin face and her fluttering cap
+ribbons, and her spry little trot leading them successfully off,
+when the door opened, and the grand Mr. Geoffrey walked in; the man
+who could manage State Street, and who had stood at the right hand
+of Governor and President, with his clear brain, and big purse, and
+generous hand, through the years of the long, terrible war; the man
+whom it was something for great people to get to their dinners, or
+to have walk late into an evening drawing-room and dignify an
+occasion for the last half hour.
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley was just simply glad to see him; so she was to see
+Kenneth Kincaid, who came a few minutes after, just as Luclarion
+brought the tray of sweetmeats in, which Mrs. Ripwinkley had so far
+innovated upon the gracious-grandmother plan as to have after tea,
+instead of before.
+
+The beautiful cockles and their rhymes got their heads all together
+around the large table, for the eating and the reading. Mr. Geoffrey
+and Uncle Titus sat talking European politics together, a little
+aside. The sugar-plums lasted a good while, with the chatter over
+them; and then, before they quite knew what it was all for, they had
+got slips of paper and lead pencils before them, and there was to be
+a round of "Crambo" to wind up.
+
+"O, I don't know how!" and "I never can!" were the first words, as
+they always are, when it was explained to the uninitiated; but Miss
+Craydocke assured them that "everybody could;" and Hazel said that
+"nobody expected real poetry; it needn't be more than two lines, and
+those might be blank verse, if they were _very_ hard, but jingles
+were better;" and so the questions and the wards were written and
+folded, and the papers were shuffled and opened amid outcries of,
+"O, this is awful!" "_What_ a word to get in!" "Why, they haven't
+the least thing to do with each other!"
+
+"That's the beauty of it," said Miss Craydocke, unrelentingly; "to
+_make_ them have; and it is funny how much things do have to do with
+each other when they once happen to come across."
+
+Then there were knit brows, and desperate scratchings, and such
+silence that Mr. Geoffrey and Uncle Titus stopped short on the
+Alabama question, and looked round to see what the matter was.
+
+Kenneth Kincaid had been modestly listening to the older gentlemen,
+and now and then venturing to inquire or remark something, with an
+intelligence that attracted Mr. Geoffrey; and presently it came out
+that he had been south with the army; and then Mr. Geoffrey asked
+questions of him, and they got upon Reconstruction business, and
+comparing facts and exchanging conclusions, quite as if one was not
+a mere youth with only his eyes and his brains and his conscience to
+help him in his first grapple with the world in the tangle and
+crisis at which he found it, and the other a grave, practiced,
+keen-judging man, the counsellor of national leaders.
+
+After all, they had no business to bring the great, troublesome,
+heavy-weighted world into a child's party. I wish man never would;
+though it did not happen badly, as it all turned out, that they did
+a little of it in this instance. If they had thought of it,
+"Crambo" was good for them too, for a change; and presently they did
+think of it; for Dorris called out in distress, real or pretended,
+from the table,--
+
+"Kentie, here's something you must really take off my hands! I
+haven't the least idea what to do with it."
+
+And then came a cry from Hazel,--
+
+"No fair! We're all just as badly off, and there isn't one of us
+that has got a brother to turn to. Here's another for Mr. Kincaid."
+
+"There are plenty more. Come, Mr. Oldways, Mr. Geoffrey, won't you
+try 'Crambo?' There's a good deal in it, as there is in most
+nonsense."
+
+"We'll come and see what it is," said Mr. Geoffrey; and so the
+chairs were drawn up, and the gray, grave heads looked on over the
+young ones.
+
+"Why, Hazel's got through!" said Lois, scratching violently at her
+paper, and obliterating three obstinate lines.
+
+"O, I didn't bother, you see! I just stuck the word right in, like a
+pin into a pincushion, and let it go. There wasn't anything else to
+do with it."
+
+"I've got to make my pincushion," said Dorris.
+
+"I should think you had! Look at her! She's writing her paper all
+over! O, my gracious, she must have done it before!"
+
+"Mother and Mr. Geoffrey are doing heaps, too! We shall have to
+publish a book," said Diana, biting the end of her pencil, and
+taking it easy. Diana hardly ever got the rhymes made in time; but
+then she always admired everybody's else, which was a good thing for
+somebody to be at leisure to do.
+
+"Uncle Oldways and Lilian are folding up," said Hazel.
+
+"Five minutes more," said Miss Craydocke, keeping the time with her
+watch before her. "Hush!"
+
+When the five minutes were rapped out, there were seven papers to be
+read. People who had not finished this time might go on when the
+others took fresh questions.
+
+Hazel began reading, because she had been ready first.
+
+"'What is the difference between sponge-cake and doughnuts?'
+'Hallelujah.'"
+
+          "Airiness, lightness, and insipidity;
+           Twistiness, spiciness, and solidity.
+           Hallelujah! I've got through!
+           That is the best that I can do!'"
+
+There was a shout at Hazel's pinsticking.
+
+"Now, Uncle Titus! You finished next."
+
+"My question is a very comprehensive one," said Uncle Titus, "with a
+very concise and suggestive word. 'How wags the world?' 'Slambang.'"
+
+          "'The world wags on
+            With lies and slang;
+            With show and vanity,
+            Pride and inanity,
+            Greed and insanity,
+            And a great slambang!'"
+
+"That's only _one_ verse," said Miss Craydocke. "There's another;
+but he didn't write it down."
+
+Uncle Titus laughed, and tossed his Crambo on the table. "It's true,
+so far, anyway," said he.
+
+"_So far_ is hardly ever quite true," said Miss Craydocke
+
+Lilian Ashburne had to answer the question whether she had ever read
+"Young's Night Thoughts;" and her word was "Comet."
+
+          "'Pray might I be allowed a pun,
+            To help me through with just this one?
+            I've tried to read Young's Thoughts of Night,
+            But never yet could come it, quite.'"
+
+"O, O, O! That's just like Lilian, with her soft little 'prays' and
+'allow me's,' and her little pussy-cat ways of sliding through tight
+places, just touching her whiskers!"
+
+"It's quite fair," said Lilian, smiling, "to slide through if you
+can."
+
+"Now, Mr. Geoffrey."
+
+And Mr. Geoffrey read,--
+
+"'What is your favorite color?' 'One-hoss.'"
+
+          "'Do you mean, my friend, for a one-hoss shay,
+            Or the horse himself,--black, roan, or bay?
+            In truth, I think I can hardly say;
+            I believe, for a nag, "I bet on the gray."
+
+          "'For a shay, I would rather not have yellow,
+            Or any outright, staring color,
+            That makes the crowd look after a fellow,
+            And the little _gamins_ hoot and bellow.
+
+          "'Do you mean for ribbons? or gowns? or eyes?
+            Or flowers? or gems? or in sunset skies?
+            For many questions, as many replies,
+            Drops of a rainbow take rainbow dyes.
+
+          "'The world is full, and the world is bright;
+            Each thing to its nature parts the light;
+            And each for its own to the Perfect sight
+            Wears that which is comely, and sweet, and right.'"
+
+"O, Mr. Geoffrey! That's lovely!" cried the girl voices, all around
+him. And Ada made a pair of great eyes at her father, and said,--
+
+"What an awful humbug you have been, papa! To have kept the other
+side up with care all your life! Who ever suspected _that_ of you?"
+
+Diana and Hazel were not taken so much by surprise, their mother
+had improvised little nursery jingles for them all their baby days,
+and had played Crambo with them since; so they were very confident
+with their "Now, mother:" and looked calmly for something
+creditable.
+
+"'What is your favorite name?'" read Mrs. Ripwinkley. "And the word
+is 'Stuff.'"
+
+          "'When I was a little child,
+            Looking very meek and mild,
+            I liked grand, heroic names,--
+            Of warriors, or stately dames:
+            Zenobia, and Cleopatra;
+            (No rhyme for that this side Sumatra;)
+            Wallace, and Helen Mar,--Clotilda,
+            Berengaria, and Brunhilda;
+            Maximilian; Alexandra;
+            Hector, Juno, and Cassandra;
+            Charlemagne and Britomarte,
+            Washington and Bonaparte;
+            Victoria and Guinevere,
+            And Lady Clara Vere de Vere.
+            --Shall I go on with all this stuff,
+            Or do you think it is enough?
+            I cannot tell you what dear name
+            I love the best; I play a game;
+            And tender earnest doth belong
+            To quiet speech, not silly song.'"
+
+"That's just like mother; I should have stopped as soon as I'd got
+the 'stuff' in; but she always shapes off with a little morriowl,"
+said Hazel. "Now, Desire!"
+
+Desire frantically scribbled a long line at the end of what she had
+written; below, that is, a great black morass of scratches that
+represented significantly the "Slough of Despond" she had got into
+over the winding up, and then gave,--
+
+"'Which way would you rather travel,--north or south?'
+'Goosey-gander.'"
+
+          "'O, goosey-gander!
+                If I might wander,
+            It should be toward the sun;
+                The blessed South
+                Should fill my mouth
+            With ripeness just begun.
+                For bleak hills, bare,
+                With stunted, spare,
+            And scrubby, piney trees,
+                Her gardens rare,
+                And vineyards fair,
+            And her rose-scented breeze.
+                For fearful blast,
+                Skies overcast,
+            And sudden blare and scare
+                Long, stormless moons,
+                And placid noons,
+            And--all sorts of comfortablenesses,--there!'"
+
+"That makes me think of father's horse running away with him once,"
+said Helena, "when he had to head him right up against a brick wall,
+and knock everything all to smash before he could stop!"
+
+"Anybody else?"
+
+"Miss Kincaid, I think," said Mr. Geoffrey. He had been watching
+Dorris's face through the play, flashing and smiling with the
+excitement of her rhyming, and the slender, nervous fingers twisting
+tremulously the penciled slip while she had listened to the others.
+
+"If it isn't all rubbed out," said Dorris, coloring and laughing to
+find how badly she had been treating her own effusion.
+
+"You see it _was_ rather an awful question,--'What do you want
+most?' And the word is, 'Thirteen.'"
+
+She caught her breath a little quickly as she began:--
+
+          "'Between yourself, dear, myself, and the post,
+            There are the thirteen things that I want the most.
+            I want to be, sometimes, a little stronger;
+            I want the days to be a little longer;
+            I'd like to have a few less things to do;
+            I'd better like to better do the few:
+            I want--and this might almost lead my wishes,--
+            A bigger place to keep my mops and dishes.
+            I want a horse; I want a little buggy,
+            To ride in when the days grow hot and muggy;
+            I want a garden; and,--perhaps it's funny,--
+            But now and then I want a little money.
+            I want an easy way to do my hair;
+            I want an extra dress or two to wear;
+            I want more patience; and when all is given,
+            I think I want to die and go to heaven!'"
+
+"I never saw such bright people in all my life!" said Ada Geoffrey,
+when the outcry of applause for Dorris had subsided, and they began
+to rise to go. "But the _worst_ of all is papa! I'll never get over
+it of you, see if I do! Such a cheat! Why, it's like playing dumb
+all your life, and then just speaking up suddenly in a quiet way,
+some day, as if it was nothing particular, and nobody cared!"
+
+With Hazel's little divining-rod, Mrs. Ripwinkley had reached out,
+testing the world for her, to see what some of it might be really
+made of. Mrs. Geoffrey, from her side, had reached out in turn,
+also, into this fresh and simple opportunity, to see what might be
+there worth while.
+
+"How was it, Aleck?" she asked of her husband, as they sat together
+in her dressing-room, while she brushed out her beautiful hair.
+
+"Brightest people I have been among for a long time--and nicest,"
+said the banker, concisely. "A real, fresh little home, with a
+mother in it. Good place for Ada to go, and good girls for her to
+know; like the ones I fell in love with a hundred years ago."
+
+"That rhymed oracle,--to say nothing of the _fraction_ of a
+compliment,--ought to settle it," said Mrs. Geoffrey, laughing.
+
+"Rhymes have been the order of the evening. I expect to talk in
+verse for a week at least."
+
+And then he told her about the "Crambo."
+
+A week after, Mrs. Ledwith was astonished to find, lying on the
+mantel in her sister's room, a card that had been sent up the day
+before,--
+
+          "MRS. ALEXANDER H. GEOFFREY."
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+MORE WITCH-WORK.
+
+
+Hazel was asked to the Geoffreys' to dinner.
+
+Before this, she and Diana had both been asked to take tea, and
+spend an evening, but this was Hazel's little especial "invite," as
+she called it, because she and Ada were writing a dialogue together
+for a composition at school.
+
+The Geoffreys dined at the good old-fashioned hour of half past two,
+except when they had formal dinner company; and Hazel was to come
+right home from school with Ada, and stay and spend the afternoon.
+
+"What intimacy!" Florence Ledwith had exclaimed, when she heard of
+it.
+
+"But it isn't at all on the grand style side; people like the
+Geoffreys do such things quite apart from their regular connection;
+it is a sort of 'behind the scenes;'" said Glossy Megilp, who was
+standing at Florence's dressing-glass, touching up the little heap
+of "friz" across her forehead.
+
+"Where's my poker?" she asked, suddenly, breaking off from the
+Geoffrey subject, and rummaging in a dressing box, intent upon
+tutoring some little obstinate loop of hair that would be _too_
+frizzy.
+
+"I should think a 'blower' might be a good thing to add to your
+tools, Glossy," said Desire. "You have brush, poker, and tongs, now,
+to say nothing of coal-hod," she added, glancing at the little open
+japanned box that held some kind of black powder which had to do
+with the shadow of Glossy's eyelashes upon occasion, and the
+emphasis upon the delicate line of her brows.
+
+"No secret," said Glossy, magnanimously. "There it is! It is no
+greater sin than violet powder, or false tails, for that matter; and
+the little gap in my left eyebrow was never deliberately designed.
+It was a 'lapsus naturæ;' I only follow out the hint, and complete
+the intention. Something _is_ left to ourselves; as the child said
+about the Lord curling her hair for her when she was a baby and
+letting her do it herself after she grew big enough. What are our
+artistic perceptions given to us for, unless we're to make the best
+of ourselves in the first place?"
+
+"But it isn't all eyebrows," said Desire, half aloud.
+
+"Of course not," said Glossy Megilp. "Twice a day I have to do
+myself up somehow, and why shouldn't it be as well as I can? Other
+things come in their turn, and I do them."
+
+"But, you see, the friz and the fix has to be, anyhow, whether or
+no. Everything isn't done, whether or no. I guess it's the 'first
+place,' that's the matter."
+
+"I think you have a very theoretical mind, Des, and a slightly
+obscure style. You can't be satisfied till everything is all mapped
+out, and organized, and justified, and you get into horrible snarls
+trying to do it. If I were you, I would take things a little more as
+they come."
+
+"I can't," said Desire. "They come hind side before and upside
+down."
+
+"Well, if everybody is upside down, there's a view of it that makes
+it all right side up, isn't there? It seems to be an established
+fact that we must dress and undress, and that the first duty of the
+day is to get up and put on our clothes. We aren't ready for much
+until we do. And one person's dressing may require one thing, and
+another's another. Some people have a cork leg to put on, and some
+people have false teeth; and they wouldn't any of them come hobbling
+or mumbling out without them, unless there was a fire or an
+earthquake, I suppose."
+
+Glossy Megilp's arguments and analogies perplexed Desire, always.
+They sometimes silenced her; but they did not always answer her. She
+went back to what they had been discussing before.
+
+"To 'lay down the shubbel and the hoe,'--here's your poker, under
+the table-flounce, Glossy,--and to 'take up the fiddle and the bow,'
+again,--I think it's real nice and beautiful for Hazel--"
+
+"To 'go where the good darkies go'?"
+
+"Yes. It's the _good_ of her that's got her in. And I believe you
+and Florence both would give your best boots to be there too, if it
+_is_ behind. Behind the fixings and the fashions is where people
+_live_; 'dere's vat I za-ay!'" she ended, quoting herself and Rip
+Van Winkle.
+
+"Maybe," said Florence, carelessly; "but I'd as lief be _in_ the
+fashion, after all. And that's where Hazel Ripwinkley never will
+get, with all her taking little novelties."
+
+Meanwhile, Hazel Ripwinkley was deep in the delights of a great
+portfolio of rare engravings; prints of glorious frescoes in old
+churches, and designs of splendid architecture; and Mrs. Geoffrey,
+seeing her real pleasure, was sitting beside her, turning over the
+large sheets, and explaining them; telling her, as she gazed into
+the wonderful faces of the Saints and the Evangelists in Correggio's
+frescoes of the church of San Giovanni at Parma, how the whole dome
+was one radiant vision of heavenly glory, with clouds and angel
+faces, and adoring apostles, and Christ the Lord high over all; and
+that these were but the filling in between the springing curves of
+the magnificent arches; describing to her the Abbess's room in San
+Paolo, with its strange, beautiful heathen picture over the mantel,
+of Diana mounting her stag-drawn car, and its circular walls painted
+with trellis-work and medallioned with windows, where the heads of
+little laughing children, and graceful, gentle animals peeped in
+from among vines and flowers.
+
+Mrs. Geoffrey did not wonder that Hazel lingered with delight over
+these or over the groups by Raphael in the Sistine Chapel,--the
+quiet pendentives, where the waiting of the world for its salvation
+was typified in the dream-like, reclining forms upon the still,
+desert sand; or the wonderful scenes from the "Creation,"--the
+majestic "Let there be Light!" and the Breathing of the breath of
+life into Man. She watched the surprise and awe with which the child
+beheld for the first time the daring of inspiration in the
+tremendous embodiment of the Almighty, and waited while she could
+hardly take her eyes away. But when, afterward, they turned to a
+portfolio of Architecture, and she found her eager to examine spires
+and arches and capitals, rich reliefs and stately facades and
+sculptured gates, and exclaiming with pleasure at the colored
+drawings of Florentine ornamentation, she wondered, and questioned
+her,--
+
+"Have you ever seen such things before? Do you draw? I should hardly
+think you would care so much, at your age."
+
+"I like the prettiness," said Hazel, simply, "and the grandness; but
+I don't suppose I should care so much if it wasn't for Dorris and
+Mr. Kincaid. Mr. Kincaid draws buildings; he's an architect; only he
+hasn't architected much yet, because the people that build things
+don't know him. Dorris was so glad to give him a Christmas present
+of 'Daguerreotypes de Paris,' with the churches and arches and
+bridges and things; she got it at a sale; I wonder what they would
+say to all these beauties!"
+
+Then Mrs. Geoffrey found what still more greatly enchanted her, a
+volume of engravings, of English Home Architecture; interiors of old
+Halls, magnificent staircases, lofty libraries and galleries dim
+with space; exteriors, gabled, turreted and towered; long, rambling
+piles of manor houses, with mixed styles of many centuries.
+
+"They look as if they were brimfull of stories!" Hazel cried. "O, if
+I could only carry it home to show to the Kincaids!"
+
+"You may," said Mrs. Geoffrey, as simply, in her turn, as if she
+were lending a copy of "Robinson Crusoe;' never letting the child
+guess by a breath of hesitation the value of what she had asked.
+
+"And tell me more about these Kincaids. They are friends of yours?"
+
+"Yes; we've known them all winter. They live right opposite, and sit
+in the windows, drawing and writing. Dorris keeps house up there in
+two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on
+the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She
+cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house
+with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket
+and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a
+white table, with a piece of oil-cloth on the floor; and then she
+comes over into her parlor, she says, and sits by the window. It's a
+kind of a play all the time."
+
+"And Mr. Kincaid?"
+
+"Dorris says he might have been rich by this time, if he had gone
+into his Uncle James's office in New York. Mr. James Kincaid is a
+broker, and buys gold. But Kenneth says gold stands for work, and if
+he ever has any he'll buy it with work. He wants to do some real
+thing. Don't you think that's nice of him?"
+
+"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Geoffrey. "And Dorris is that bright girl
+who wanted thirteen things, and rhymed them into 'Crambo?' Mr.
+Geoffrey told me."
+
+"Yes, ma'am; Dorris can do almost anything."
+
+"I should like to see Dorris, sometime. Will you bring her here,
+Hazel?"
+
+Hazel's little witch-rod felt the almost impassible something in the
+way.
+
+"I don't know as she would be _brought_," she said.
+
+Mrs. Geoffrey laughed.
+
+"You have an instinct for the fine proprieties, without a bit of
+respect for any conventional fences," she said. "I'll _ask_ Dorris."
+
+"Then I'm sure she'll come," said Hazel, understanding quite well
+and gladly the last three words, and passing over the first phrase
+as if it had been a Greek motto, put there to be skipped.
+
+"Ada has stopped practicing," said Mrs. Geoffrey, who had undertaken
+the entertainment of her little guest during her daughter's half
+hour of music. "She will be waiting for you now."
+
+Hazel instantly jumped up.
+
+But she paused after three steps toward the door, to say gently,
+looking back over her shoulder with a shy glance out of her timidly
+clear eyes,--
+
+"Perhaps,--I hope I haven't,--stayed too long!"
+
+"Come back, you little hazel-sprite!" cried Mrs. Geoffrey; and when
+she got her within reach again, she put her hands one each side of
+the little blushing, gleaming face, and kissed it, saying,--
+
+"I don't _think_,--I'm slow, usually, in making up my mind about
+people, big or little,--but I don't think you can stay too long,--or
+come too often, dear!"
+
+"I've found another for you, Aleck," she said, that night at the
+hair-brushing, to her husband.
+
+He always came to sit in her dressing-room, then; and it was at this
+quiet time that they gave each other, out of the day they had lived
+in their partly separate ways and duties, that which made it for
+each like a day lived twice, so that the years of their life counted
+up double.
+
+"He is a young architect, who hasn't architected much, because he
+doesn't know the people who build things; and he wouldn't be a gold
+broker with his uncle in New York, because he believes in doing
+money's worth in the world for the world's money. Isn't he one?"
+
+"Sounds like it," said Mr. Geoffrey. "What is his name?"
+
+"Kincaid."
+
+"Nephew of James R. Kincaid?" said Mr. Geoffrey, with an
+interrogation that was also an exclamation. "And wouldn't go in with
+him! Why, it was just to have picked up dollars!"
+
+"Exactly," replied his wife. "That was what he objected to."
+
+"I should like to see the fellow."
+
+"Don't you remember? You have seen him! The night you went for Ada
+to the Aspen Street party, and got into 'Crambo.' He was there; and
+it was his sister who wanted thirteen things. I guess they do!"
+
+"Ask them here," said the banker.
+
+"I mean to," Mrs. Geoffrey answered. "That is, after I've seen
+Hapsie Craydocke. She knows everything. I'll go there to-morrow
+morning."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"'Behind' is a pretty good way to get in--to some places," said
+Desire Ledwith, coming into the rose-pink room with news.
+"Especially an omnibus. And the Ripwinkleys, and the Kincaids, and
+old Miss Craydocke, and for all I know, Mrs. Scarup and Luclarion
+Grapp are going to Summit Street to tea to-night. Boston is
+topsy-turvey; Holmes was a prophet; and 'Brattle Street and Temple
+Place are interchanging cards!' Mother, we ought to get intimate
+with the family over the grocer's shop. Who knows what would come of
+it? There are fairies about in disguise, I'm sure; or else it's the
+millennium. Whichever it is, it's all right for Hazel, though; she's
+ready. Don't you feel like foolish virgins, Flo and Nag? I do."
+
+I am afraid it was when Desire felt a little inclination to "nag"
+her elder sister, that she called her by that reprehensible name.
+Agatha only looked lofty, and vouchsafed no reply; but Florence
+said,--
+
+"There's no need of any little triumphs or mortifications. Nobody
+crows, and nobody cries. _I_'m glad. Diana's a dear, and Hazel's a
+duck, besides being my cousins; why shouldn't I? Only there _is_ a
+large hole for the cats, and a little hole for the kittens; and I'd
+as lief, myself, go in with the cats."
+
+"The Marchbankses are staying there, and Professor Gregory. I don't
+know about cats," said Desire, demurely.
+
+"It's a reason-why party, for all that," said Agatha, carelessly,
+recovering her good humor.
+
+"Well, when any nice people ask me, I hope there _will_ be a 'reason
+why.' It's the persons of consequence that make the 'reason why.'"
+
+And Desire had the last word.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Hazel Ripwinkley was thinking neither of large holes nor little
+ones,--cats nor kittens; she was saying to Luclarion, sitting in her
+shady down-stairs room behind the kitchen, that looked out into the
+green yard corner, "how nicely things came out, after all!"
+
+"They seemed so hobblety at first, when I went up there and saw all
+those beautiful books, and pictures, and people living amongst them
+every day, and the poor Kincaids not getting the least bit of a
+stretch out of their corner, ever. I'll tell you what I thought,
+Luclarion;" and here she almost whispered, "I truly did. I thought
+God was making a mistake."
+
+Luclarion put out her lips into a round, deprecating pucker, at
+that, and drew in her breath,--
+
+"Oo--sh!"
+
+"Well, I mean it seemed as if there was a mistake somewhere; and
+that I'd no business, at any rate, with what they wanted so. I
+couldn't get over it until I asked for those pictures; and mother
+said it was such a bold thing to do!"
+
+"It was bold," said Luclarion; "but it wasn't forrud. It was gi'n
+you, and it hit right. That was looked out for."
+
+"It's a stumpy world," said Luclarion Grapp to Mrs. Ripwinkley,
+afterward; "but some folks step right over their stumps athout
+scarcely knowin' when!"
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+CRUMBS.
+
+
+Desire Ledwith was, at this epoch, a perplexity and a worry,--even a
+positive terror sometimes,--to her mother.
+
+It was not a case of the hen hatching ducks, it was rather as if a
+hen had got a hawk in her brood.
+
+Desire's demurs and questions,--her dissatisfactions, sittings and
+contempts,--threatened now and then to swoop down upon the family
+life and comfort with destroying talons.
+
+"She'll be an awful, strong-minded, radical, progressive,
+overturning woman," Laura said, in despair, to her friend Mrs.
+Megilp. "And Greenley Street, and Aspen Street, and that everlasting
+Miss Craydocke, are making her worse. And what can I do? Because
+there's Uncle."
+
+Right before Desire,--not knowing the cloud of real bewilderment
+that was upon her young spiritual perceptions, getting their first
+glimpse of a tangled and conflicting and distorted world,--she drew
+wondering comparisons between her elder children and this odd,
+anxious, restless, sharp-spoken girl.
+
+"I don't understand it," she would say. "It isn't a bit like a child
+of mine. I always took things easy, and got the comfort of them
+somehow; I think the world is a pretty pleasant place to live in,
+and there's lots of satisfaction to be had; and Agatha and Florence
+take after me; they are nice, good-natured, contented girls;
+managing their allowances,--that I wish were more,--trimming their
+own bonnets, and enjoying themselves with their friends,
+girl-fashion."
+
+Which was true. Agatha and Florence were neither fretful nor
+dissatisfied; they were never disrespectful, perhaps because Mrs.
+Ledwith demanded less of deferential observance than of a kind of
+jolly companionship from her daughters; a go-and-come easiness in
+and out of what they called their home, but which was rather the
+trimming-up and outfitting place,--a sort of Holmes' Hole,--where
+they put in spring and fall, for a thorough overhaul and rig; and at
+other times, in intervals or emergencies, between their various and
+continual social trips and cruises. They were hardly ever
+all-togetherish, as Desire had said, if they ever were, it was over
+house cleaning and millinery; when the ordering was complete,--when
+the wardrobes were finished,--then the world was let in, or they let
+themselves out, and--"looked."
+
+"Desire is different," said Mrs. Ledwith. "She's like Grant's
+father, and her Aunt Desire,--pudgicky and queer."
+
+"Well, mamma," said the child, once, driven to desperate logic for
+defense, "I don't see how it can be helped. If you _will_ marry into
+the Ledwith family, you can't expect to have your children all
+Shieres!"
+
+Which, again, was very true. Laura laughed at the clever sharpness
+of it, and was more than half proud of her bold chick-of-prey, after
+all.
+
+Yet Desire remembered that her Aunt Frances was a Shiere, also; and
+she thought there might easily be two sides to the same family; why
+not, since there were two sides still further back, always? There
+was Uncle Titus; who knew but it was the Oldways streak in him after
+all?
+
+Desire took refuge, more and more, with Miss Craydocke, and Rachel
+Froke, and the Ripwinkleys; she even went to Luclarion with
+questions, to get her quaint notions of things; and she had ventured
+into Uncle Titus's study, and taken down volumes of Swedenborg to
+pry into, while he looked at her with long keen regards over his
+spectacles, and she did not know that she was watched.
+
+"That young girl, Desire, is restless, Titus," Rachel Froke said to
+him one day. "She is feeling after something; she wants something
+real to do; and it appears likely to me that she will do it, if they
+don't take care."
+
+After that, Uncle Titus fixed his attention upon her yet more
+closely; and at this time Desire stumbled upon things in a strange
+way among his bookshelves, and thought that Rachel Froke was growing
+less precise in her fashion of putting to rights. Books were tucked
+in beside each other as if they had been picked up and bestowed
+anyhow; between "Heaven and Hell" and the "Four Leading Doctrines,"
+she found, one day, "Macdonald's Unspoken Sermons," and there was a
+leaf doubled lengthwise in the chapter about the White Stone and the
+New Name. Another time, a little book of poems, by the same author,
+was slid in, open, over the volumes of Darwin and Huxley, and the
+pages upon whose outspread faces it lay were those that bore the
+rhyme of the blind Bartimeus:--
+
+          "O Jesus Christ! I am deaf and blind;
+           Nothing comes through into my mind,
+             I only am not dumb:
+           Although I see Thee not, nor hear,
+           I cry because Thou mayst be near
+             O Son of Mary! come!"
+
+Do you think a girl of seventeen may not be feeling out into the
+spiritual dark,--may not be stretching helpless hands, vaguely,
+toward the Hands that help? Desire Ledwith laid the book down again,
+with a great swelling breath coming up slowly out of her bosom, and
+with a warmth of tears in her earnest little eyes. And Uncle Titus
+Oldways sat there among his papers, and never moved, or seemed to
+look, but saw it all.
+
+He never said a word to her himself; it was not Uncle Titus's way to
+talk, and few suspected him of having anything to say in such
+matters; but he went to Friend Froke and asked her,--
+
+"Haven't you got any light that might shine a little for that child,
+Rachel?"
+
+And the next Sunday, in the forenoon, Desire came in; came in,
+without knowing it, for her little light.
+
+She had left home with the family on their way to church; she was
+dressed in her buff silk pongee suit trimmed with golden brown bands
+and quillings; she had on a lovely new brown hat with tea roses in
+it; her gloves and boots were exquisite and many buttoned; Agatha
+and Florence could not think what was the matter when she turned
+back, up Dorset Street, saying suddenly, "I won't go, after all."
+And then she had walked straight over the hill and down to Greenley
+Street, and came in upon Rachel, sitting alone in a quiet gray
+parlor that was her own, where there were ferns and ivies in the
+window, and a little canary, dressed in brown and gold like Desire
+herself, swung over them in a white wire cage.
+
+When Desire saw how still it was, and how Rachel Froke sat there
+with her open window and her open book, all by herself, she stopped
+in the doorway with a sudden feeling of intrusion, which had not
+occurred to her as she came.
+
+"It's just what I want to come into; but if I do, it won't be
+there. I've no right to spoil it. Don't mind, Rachel. I'll go away."
+
+She said it softly and sadly, as if she could not help it, and was
+turning back into the hall.
+
+"But I do mind," said Rachel, speaking quickly. "Thee will come in,
+and sit down. Whatever it is thee wants, is here for thee. Is it the
+stillness? Then we will be still."
+
+"That's so easy to say. But you can't do it for me. _You_ will be
+still, and I shall be all in a stir. I want so to be just hushed
+up!"
+
+"Fed, and hushed up, in somebody's arms, like a baby. I know," said
+Rachel Froke.
+
+"How does she know?" thought Desire; but she only looked at her with
+surprised eyes, saying nothing.
+
+"Hungry and restless; that's what we all are," said Rachel Froke,
+"until"--
+
+"Well,--until?" demanded the strange girl, impetuously, as Rachel
+paused. "I've been hungry ever since I was born, mother says."
+
+"Until He takes us up and feeds us."
+
+"Why don't He?--Mrs. Froke, when does He give it out? Once a month,
+in church, they have the bread and the wine? Does that do it?"
+
+"Thee knows we do not hold by ordinances, we Friends," said Rachel.
+"But He gives the bread of life. Not once a month, or in any place;
+it is his word. Does thee get no word when thee goes to church? Does
+nothing come to thee?"
+
+"I don't know; it's mixed up; the church is full of bonnets; and
+people settle their gowns when they come in, and shake out their
+hitches and puffs when they go out, and there's professional music
+at one end, and--I suppose it's because I'm bad, but I don't know;
+half the time it seems to me it's only Mig at the other. Something
+all fixed up, and patted down, and smoothed over, and salted and
+buttered, like the potato hills they used to make on my plate for me
+at dinner, when I was little. But it's soggy after all, and has an
+underground taste. It isn't anything that has just grown, up in the
+light, like the ears of corn they rubbed in their hands. Breakfast
+is better than dinner. Bread, with yeast in it, risen up new. They
+don't feed with bread very often."
+
+"The yeast in the bread, and the sparkle in the wine they are the
+life of it; they are what make the signs."
+
+"If they only gave it out fresh, and a little of it! But they keep
+it over, and it grows cold and tough and flat, and people sit round
+and pretend, but they don't eat. They've eaten other things,--all
+sorts of trash,--before they came. They've spoiled their appetites.
+Mine was spoiled, to-day. I felt so new and fussy, in these brown
+things. So I turned round, and came here."
+
+Mr. Oldways' saying came back into Mrs. Froke's mind:--
+
+"Haven't you got any light, Rachel, that might shine a little for
+that child?"
+
+Perhaps that was what the child had come for.
+
+What had the word of the Spirit been to Rachel Froke this day? The
+new, fresh word, with the leaven in it? "A little of it;" that was
+what she wanted.
+
+Rachel took up the small red Bible that lay on the lightstand beside
+her.
+
+"I'll will give thee my First-Day crumb, Desire," she said. "It may
+taste sweet to thee."
+
+She turned to Revelation, seventh chapter.
+
+"Look over with me; thee will see then where the crumb is," she
+said; and as Desire came near and looked over her upon the page,
+she read from the last two verses:--
+
+"They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more.
+
+"For the _Tenderness_ that is in the midst of the _Almightiness_
+shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water;
+and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."
+
+Her voice lingered over the words she put for the "Lamb" and the
+"Throne," so that she said "Tenderness" with its own very yearning
+inflection, and "Almightiness" with a strong fullness, glad in that
+which can never fall short or be exhausted. Then she softly laid
+over the cover, and sat perfectly still. It was the Quaker silence
+that falls upon them in their assemblies, leaving each heart to
+itself and that which the Spirit has given.
+
+Desire was hushed all through; something living and real had
+thrilled into her thought; her restlessness quieted suddenly under
+it, as Mary stood quiet before the message of the angel.
+
+When she did speak again, after a time, as Rachel Froke broke the
+motionless pause by laying the book gently back again upon the
+table, it was to say,--
+
+"Why don't they preach like that, and leave the rest to preach
+itself? A Sermon means a Word; why don't they just say the word, and
+let it go?"
+
+The Friend made no reply.
+
+"I never could--quite--like that about the 'Lamb,' before," said
+Desire, hesitatingly. "It seemed,--I don't know,--putting Him
+_down_, somehow; making him tame; taking the grandness away that
+made the gentleness any good. But,--'Tenderness;' that is beautiful!
+Does it mean so in the other place? About taking away the sins,--do
+you think?"
+
+"'The Tenderness of God--the Compassion--that taketh away the sins
+of the world?'" Mrs. Froke repeated, half inquiringly. "Jesus
+Christ, God's Heart of Love toward man? I think it is so. I think,
+child, thee has got thy crumb also, to-day."
+
+But not all yet.
+
+Pretty soon, they heard the front door open, and Uncle Titus come
+in. Another step was behind his; and Kenneth Kincaid's voice was
+speaking, about some book he had called to take.
+
+Desire's face flushed, and her manner grew suddenly flurried.
+
+"I must go," she said, starting up; yet when she got to the door,
+she paused and delayed.
+
+The voices were talking on, in the study; somehow, Desire had last
+words also, to say to Mrs. Froke.
+
+She was partly shy about going past that open door, and partly
+afraid they might not notice her if she did. Back in her girlish
+thought was a secret suggestion that she was pushing at all the time
+with a certain self-scorn and denial, that it might happen that she
+and Kenneth Kincaid would go out at the same moment; if so, he would
+walk up the street with her, and Kenneth Kincaid was one of the few
+persons whom Desire Ledwith thoroughly believed in and liked. "There
+was no Mig about him," she said. It is hazardous when a girl of
+seventeen makes one of her rare exceptions in her estimate of
+character in favor of a man of six and twenty.
+
+Yet Desire Ledwith hated "nonsense;" she wouldn't have anybody
+sending her bouquets as they did to Agatha and Florence; she had an
+utter contempt for lavender pantaloons and waxed moustaches; but for
+Kenneth Kincaid, with his honest, clear look at life, and his high
+strong purpose, to say friendly things,--tell her a little now and
+then of how the world looked to him and what it demanded,--this
+lifted her up; this made it seem worth while to speak and to hear.
+
+So she was very glad when Uncle Titus saw her go down the hall,
+after she had made up her mind that that way lay her straight path,
+and that things contrived were not things worth happening,--and
+spoke out her name, so that she had to stop, and turn to the open
+doorway and reply; and Kenneth Kincaid came over and held out his
+hand to her. He had two books in the other,--a volume of Bunsen and
+a copy of "Guild Court,"--and he was just ready to go.
+
+"Not been to church to-day?" said Uncle Titus to Desire.
+
+"I've been--to Friend's Meeting," the girl answered.
+
+"Get anything by that?" he asked, gruffly, letting the shag down
+over his eyes that behind it beamed softly.
+
+"Yes; a morsel," replied Desire. "All I wanted."
+
+"All you wanted? Well, that's a Sunday-full!"
+
+"Yes, sir, I think it is," said she.
+
+When they got out upon the sidewalk, Kenneth Kincaid asked, "Was it
+one of the morsels that may be shared, Miss Desire? Some crumbs
+multiply by dividing, you know."
+
+"It was only a verse out of the Bible, with a new word in it."
+
+"A new word? Well, I think Bible verses often have that. I suppose
+it was what they were made for."
+
+Desire's glance at him had a question in it.
+
+"Made to look different at different times, as everything does that
+has life in it. Isn't that true? Clouds, trees, faces,--do they ever
+look twice the same?"
+
+"Yes," said Desire, thinking especially of the faces. "I think they
+do, or ought to. But they may look _more_."
+
+"I didn't say _contradictory_. To look more, there must be a
+difference; a fresh aspect. And that is what the world is full of;
+and the world is the word of God."
+
+"The world?" said Desire, who had been taught in a dried up,
+mechanical sort of way, that the Bible is the word of God; and
+practically left to infer that, that point once settled, it might be
+safely shut, up between its covers and not much meddled with,
+certainly not over freely interpreted.
+
+"Yes. What God had to say. In the beginning was the Word, and the
+Word was God. Without him was not anything made that was made."
+
+Desire's face brightened. She knew those words by heart. They were
+the first Sunday-school lesson she ever committed to memory, out of
+the New Testament; "down to 'grace and truth,'" as she recollected.
+What a jumble of repetitions it had been to her, then! Sentences so
+much alike that she could not remember them apart, or which way they
+came. All at once the simple, beautiful meaning was given to her.
+
+_What God had to say._
+
+And it took a world,--millions, of worlds,--to say it with.
+
+"And the Bible, too?" she said, simply following out her own mental
+perception, without giving the link. It was not needed. They were
+upon one track.
+
+"Yes; all things; and all _souls_. The world-word comes through
+things; the Bible came through souls. And it is all the more alive,
+and full, and deep, and changing; like a river."
+
+"Living fountains of waters! that was part of the morsel to-day,"
+Desire repeated impulsively, and then shyly explained.
+
+"And the new word?"
+
+Desire shrunk into silence for a moment; she was not used to, or
+fond of Bible quoting, or even Bible talk; yet sin was hungering all
+the time for Bible truth.
+
+Mr. Kincaid waited.
+
+So she repeated it presently; for Desire never made a fuss; she was
+too really sensitive for that.
+
+"'The Tenderness in the midst of the Almightiness shall feed them,
+and shall lead them to living fountains of water.'"
+
+Mr. Kincaid recognized the "new word," and his face lit up.
+
+"'The Lamb in the midst of the Throne,'" he said. "Out of the Heart
+of God, the Christ. Who was there before; the intent by which all
+things were made. The same yesterday, and to-day, and forever; who
+ever liveth to make intercession for us. Christ _had to be_. The
+Word, full of grace, must be made flesh. Why need people dispute
+about Eternity and Divinity, if they can only see that?--Was that
+Mrs. Froke's reading?"
+
+"Yes; that was Rachel's sermon."
+
+"It is an illumination."
+
+They walked all up Orchard Street without another word.
+
+Then Kenneth Kincaid said,--"Miss Desire, why won't you come and
+teach in the Mission School?"
+
+"I teach? Why, I've got everything to learn!"
+
+"But as fast as you _do_ learn; the morsels, you know. That is the
+way they are given out. That is the wonder of the kingdom of heaven.
+There is no need to go away and buy three hundred pennyworth before
+we begin, that every one may take a little; the bread given as the
+Master breaks it feeds them till they are filled; and there are
+baskets full of fragments to gather up."
+
+Kenneth Kincaid's heart was in his Sunday work, as his sister had
+said. The more gladly now, that the outward daily bread was being
+given.
+
+Mr. Geoffrey,--one of those busy men, so busy that they do promptly
+that which their hands find to do,--had put Kenneth in the way of
+work. It only needed a word from him, and the surveying and laying
+out of some new streets and avenues down there where Boston is
+growing so big and grand and strange, were put into his charge.
+Kenneth was busy now, cheerily busy, from Monday morning to Saturday
+night; and restfully busy on the Sunday, straightening the paths and
+laying out the ways for souls to walk in. He felt the harmony and
+the illustration between his week and his Sunday, and the one
+strengthening the other, as all true outward work does harmonize
+with and show forth, and help the spiritual doing. It could not have
+been so with that gold work, or any little feverish hitching on to
+other men's business; producing nothing, advancing nothing, only
+standing between to snatch what might fall, or to keep a premium for
+passing from hand to hand.
+
+Our great cities are so full,--our whole country is so
+overrun,--with these officious middle-men whom the world does not
+truly want; chiffonniers of trade, who only pick up a living out of
+the great press and waste and overflow; and our boys are so eager to
+slip in to some such easy, ready-made opportunity,--to get some
+crossing to sweep.
+
+What will come of it all, as the pretenses multiply? Will there be
+always pennies for every little broom? Will two, and three, and six
+sweeps be tolerated between side and side? By and by, I think, they
+will have to turn to and lay pavements. Hard, honest work, and the
+day's pay for it; that is what we have got to go back to; that and
+the day's snug, patient living, which the pay achieves.
+
+Then, as I say, the week shall illustrate the Sunday, and the Sunday
+shall glorify the week; and what men do and build shall stand true
+types, again, for the inner growth and the invisible building; so
+that if this outer tabernacle were dissolved, there should be seen
+glorious behind it, the house not made with hands,--eternal.
+
+As Desire Ledwith met this young Kenneth Kincaid from day to day,
+seeing him so often at her Aunt Ripwinkley's, where he and Dorris
+went in and out now, almost like a son and daughter,--as she walked
+beside him this morning, hearing him say these things, at which
+the heart-longing in her burned anew toward the real and
+satisfying,--what wonder was it that her restlessness grasped at
+that in his life which was strong and full of rest; that she felt
+glad and proud to have him tell his thought to her; that without any
+silliness,--despising all silliness,--she should yet be conscious,
+as girls of seventeen are conscious, of something that made her day
+sufficient when she had so met him,--of a temptation to turn into
+those streets in her walks that led his way? Or that she often, with
+her blunt truth, toward herself as well as others, and her quick
+contempt of sham and subterfuge, should snub herself mentally, and
+turn herself round as by a grasp of her own shoulders, and make
+herself walk off stoutly in a far and opposite direction, when,
+without due need and excuse, she caught herself out in these things?
+
+What wonder that this stood in her way, for very pleasantness, when
+Kenneth asked her to come and teach in the school? That she was
+ashamed to let herself do a thing--even a good thing, that her life
+needed,--when there was this conscious charm in the asking; this
+secret thought--that she should walk up home with him every Sunday!
+
+She remembered Agatha and Florence, and she imagined, perhaps, more
+than they would really have thought of it at home; and so as they
+turned into Shubarton Place,--for he had kept on all the way along
+Bridgeley and up Dorset Street with her,--she checked her steps
+suddenly as they came near the door, and said brusquely,--
+
+"No, Mr. Kincaid; I can't come to the Mission. I might learn A, and
+teach them that; but how do I know I shall ever learn B, myself?"
+
+He had left his question, as their talk went on, meaning to ask it
+again before they separated. He thought it was prevailing with her,
+and that the help that comes of helping others would reach her need;
+it was for her sake he asked it; he was disappointed at the sudden,
+almost trivial turn she gave it.
+
+"You have taken up another analogy, Miss Desire," he said. "We were
+talking about crumbs and feeding. The five loaves and the five
+thousand. 'Why reason ye because ye have no bread? How is it that ye
+do not understand?'"
+
+Kenneth quoted these words naturally, pleasantly; as he might quote
+anything that had been spoken to them both out of a love and
+authority they both recognized, a little while ago.
+
+But Desire was suddenly sharp and fractious. If it had not touched
+some deep, live place in her, she would not have minded so much. It
+was partly, too, the coming toward home. She had got away out of the
+pure, clear spaces where such things seemed to be fit and
+unstrained, into the edge of her earth atmosphere again, where,
+falling, they took fire. Presently she would be in that ridiculous
+pink room, and Glossy Megilp would be chattering about "those lovely
+purple poppies with the black grass," that she had been lamenting
+all the morning she had not bought for her chip hat, instead of the
+pomegranate flowers. And Agatha would be on the bed, in her cashmere
+sack, reading Miss Braddon.
+
+"It would sound nice to tell them she was going down to the Mission
+School to give out crumbs!"
+
+Besides, I suppose that persons of a certain temperament never utter
+a more ungracious "No," than when they are longing all the time to
+say "Yes."
+
+So she turned round on the lower step to Kenneth, when he had asked
+that grave, sweet question of the Lord's, and said perversely,--
+
+"I thought you did not believe in any brokering kind of business.
+It's all there,--for everybody. Why should I set up to fetch and
+carry?"
+
+She did not look in his face as she said it; she was not audacious
+enough to do that; she poked with the stick of her sunshade between
+the uneven bricks of the sidewalk, keeping her eyes down, as if she
+watched for some truth she expected to pry up. But she only wedged
+the stick in so that she could not get it out; and Kenneth Kincaid
+making her absolutely no answer at all, she had to stand there,
+growing red and ashamed, held fast by her own silly trap.
+
+"Take care; you will break it," said Kenneth, quietly, as she gave
+it a twist and a wrench. And he put out his hand, and took it from
+hers, and drew gently upward in the line in which she had thrust it
+in.
+
+"You were bearing off at an angle. It wanted a straight pull."
+
+"I never pull straight at anything. I always get into a crook,
+somehow. You didn't answer me, Mr. Kincaid. I didn't mean to be
+rude--or wicked. I didn't mean--"
+
+"What you said. I know that; and it's no use to answer what people
+don't mean. That makes the crookedest crook of all."
+
+"But I think I did mean it partly; only not contrarimindedly. I do
+mean that I have no business--yet awhile. It would only be--Migging
+at gospel!"
+
+And with this remarkable application of her favorite illustrative
+expression, she made a friendly but abrupt motion of leave-taking,
+and went into the house.
+
+Up into her own room, in the third story, where the old furniture
+was, and no "fadging,"--and sat down, bonnet, gloves, sunshade, and
+all, in her little cane rocking-chair by the window.
+
+Helena was down in the pink room, listening with charmed ears to the
+grown up young-ladyisms of her elder sisters and Glossy Megilp.
+
+Desire sat still until the dinner-bell rang, forgetful of her dress,
+forgetful of all but one thought that she spoke out as she rose at
+last at the summons to take off her things in a hurry,--
+
+"I wonder,--I _wonder_--if I shall ever live anything all straight
+out!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+PIECES OF WORLDS.
+
+
+Mr. Dickens never put a truer thought into any book, than he put at
+the beginning of "Little Dorrit."
+
+That, from over land and sea, from hundreds, thousands of miles
+away, are coming the people with whom we are to have to do in our
+lives; and that, "what is set to us to do to them, and what is set
+for them to do to us, will all be done."
+
+Not only from far places in this earth, over land and sea,--but from
+out the eternities, before and after,--from which souls are born,
+and into which they die,--all the lines of life are moving
+continually which are to meet and join, and bend, and cross our own.
+
+But it is only with a little piece of this world, as far as we can
+see it in this short and simple story, that we have now to do.
+
+Rosamond Holabird was coming down to Boston.
+
+With all her pretty, fresh, delicate, high-lady ways, with her
+beautiful looks, and her sweet readiness for true things and noble
+living, she was coming, for a few days only,--the cooperative
+housekeeping was going on at Westover, and she could not be spared
+long,--right in among them here in Aspen Street, and Shubarton
+Place, and Orchard Street, and Harrisburg Square, where Mrs.
+Scherman lived whom she was going to stay with. But a few days may
+be a great deal.
+
+Rosamond Holabird was coming for far more than she knew. Among
+other things she was coming to get a lesson; a lesson right on in a
+course she was just now learning; a lesson of next things, and best
+things, and real folks.
+
+You see how it happened,--where the links were; Miss Craydocke, and
+Sin Scherman, and Leslie Goldthwaite, were dear friends, made to
+each other one summer among the mountains. Leslie had had Sin and
+Miss Craydocke up at Z----, and Rosamond and Leslie were friends,
+also.
+
+Mrs. Frank Scherman had a pretty house in Harrisburg Square. She had
+not much time for paying fashionable calls, or party-going, or
+party-giving. As to the last, she did not think Frank had money
+enough yet to "circumfuse," she said, in that way.
+
+But she had six lovely little harlequin cups on a side-shelf in her
+china closet, and six different-patterned breakfast plates, with
+colored borders to match the cups; rose, and brown, and gray, and
+vermilion, and green, and blue. These were all the real china she
+had, and were for Frank and herself and the friends whom she made
+welcome,--and who might come four at once,--for day and night. She
+delighted in "little stays;" in girls who would go into the nursery
+with her, and see Sinsie in her bath; or into the kitchen, and help
+her mix up "little delectabilities to surprise Frank with;" only the
+trouble had got to be now, that the surprise occurred when the
+delectabilities did not. Frank had got demoralized, and expected
+them. She rejoiced to have Miss Craydocke drop in of a morning and
+come right up stairs, with her little petticoats and things to work
+on; and she and Frank returned these visits in a social, cosy way,
+after Sinsie was in her crib for the night. Frank's boots never went
+on with a struggle for a walk down to Orchard Street; but they were
+terribly impossible for Continuation Avenue.
+
+So it had come about long ago, though I have not had a corner to
+mention it in, that they "knew the Muffin Man," in an Aspen Street
+sense; and were no strangers to the charm of Mrs. Ripwinkley's
+"evenings." There was always an "evening" in the "Mile Hill House,"
+as the little family and friendly coterie had come to call it.
+
+Rosamond and Leslie had been down together for a week once, at the
+Schermans; and this time Rosamond was coming alone. She had business
+in Boston for a day or two, and had written to ask Asenath "if she
+might." There were things to buy for Barbara, who was going to be
+married in a "navy hurry," besides an especial matter that had
+determined her just at this time to come.
+
+And Asenath answered, "that the scarlet and gray, and green and blue
+were pining and fading on the shelf; and four days would be the very
+least to give them all a turn and treat them fairly; for such things
+had their delicate susceptibilities, as Hans Andersen had taught us
+to know, and might starve and suffer,--why not? being made of
+protoplasm, same as anybody."
+
+Rosamond's especial errand to the city was one that just a little
+set her up, innocently, in her mind. She had not wholly got the
+better,--when it interfered with no good-will or generous
+dealing,--of a certain little instinctive reverence for imposing
+outsides and grand ways of daily doing; and she was somewhat
+complacent at the idea of having to go,--with kindly and needful
+information,--to Madam Mucklegrand, in Spreadsplendid Park.
+
+Madam Mucklegrand was a well-born Boston lady, who had gone to
+Europe in her early youth, and married a Scottish gentleman with a
+Sir before his name. Consequently, she was quite entitled to be
+called "my lady;" and some people who liked the opportunity of
+touching their republican tongues to the salt of European
+dignitaries, addressed her so; but, for the most part, she assumed
+and received simply the style of "Madam." A queen may be called
+"Madam," you know. It covers an indefinite greatness. But when she
+spoke of her late,--very long ago,--husband, she always named him as
+"Sir Archibald."
+
+Madam Mucklegrand's daughter wanted a wet-nurse for her little baby.
+
+Up in Z----, there was a poor woman whose husband, a young brakeman
+on the railroad, had been suddenly killed three months ago, before
+her child was born. There was a sister here in Boston, who could
+take care of it for her if she could go to be foster-mother to some
+rich little baby, who was yet so poor as this--to need one. So
+Rosamond Holabird, who was especially interested for Mrs. Jopson,
+had written to Asenath, and had an advertisement put in the
+"Transcript," referring to Mrs. Scherman for information. And the
+Mucklegrand carriage had rolled up, the next day, to the house in
+Harrisburg Square.
+
+They wanted to see the woman, of course, and to hear all about
+her,--more than Mrs. Scherman was quite able to tell; therefore when
+she sent a little note up to Z----, by the evening mail, Rosamond
+replied with her "Might she come?"
+
+She brought Jane Jopson and the baby down with her, left them over
+night at Mrs. Ginnever's, in Sheafe Street, and was to go for them
+next morning and take them up to Spreadsplendid Park. She had sent a
+graceful, polite little note to Madam Mucklegrand, dated "Westover,
+Z----," and signed, "Rosamond Holabird," offering to do this, that
+there might not be the danger of Jane's losing the chance in the
+meanwhile.
+
+It was certainly to accomplish the good deed that Rosamond cared
+the most; but it was also certainly something to accomplish it in
+that very high quarter. It lent a piquancy to the occasion.
+
+She came down to breakfast very nicely and discriminatingly dressed,
+with the elegant quietness of a lady who knew what was simply
+appropriate to such an errand and the early hour, but who meant to
+be recognized as the lady in every unmistakable touch; and there was
+a carriage ordered for her at half past nine.
+
+Sin Scherman was a cute little matron; she discerned the dash of
+subdued importance in Rosamond's air; and she thought it very
+likely, in the Boston nature of things, that it would get
+wholesomely and civilly toned down.
+
+Just at this moment, Rosamond, putting on her little straw bonnet
+with real lace upon it, and her simple little narrow-bordered green
+shawl, that was yet, as far as it went, veritable cashmere,--had a
+consciousness, in a still, modest way, not only of her own personal
+dignity as Rosamond Holabird, who was the same going to see Madam
+Mucklegrand, or walking over to Madam Pennington's, and as much in
+her place with one as the other; but of the dignity of Westover
+itself, and Westover ladyhood, represented by her among the palaces
+of Boston-Appendix to-day.
+
+She was only twenty, this fair and pleasant Rosamond of ours, and
+country simple, with all her native tact and grace; and she forgot,
+or did not know how full of impressions a life like Madam
+Mucklegrand's might be, and how very trifling and fleeting must be
+any that she might chance to make.
+
+She drove away down to the North End, and took Jane Jopson and her
+baby in,--very clean and shiny, both of them,--and Jane
+particularly nice in the little black crape bonnet that Rosamond
+herself had made, and the plain black shawl that Mrs. Holabird had
+given her.
+
+She stood at the head of the high, broad steps, with her mind very
+much made up in regard to her complete and well-bred self-possession,
+and the manner of her quietly assured self-introduction. She had her
+card all ready that should explain for her; and to the servant's
+reply that Madam Mucklegrand was in, she responded by moving forward
+with only enough of voluntary hesitation to allow him to indicate to
+her the reception room, at the door of which she gave him the little
+pasteboard, with,--
+
+"Take that to her, if you please," and so sat down, very much as if
+she had been in such places frequently before, which she never had.
+One may be quite used to the fine, free essence of gentle living,
+and never in all one's life have anything to do with such solid,
+concrete expression of it as Rosamond saw here.
+
+Very high, to begin with, the ceiled and paneled room was; reaching
+up into space as if it had really been of no consequence to the
+builders where they should put the cover on; and with no remotest
+suggestion of any reserve for further superstructure upon the same
+foundation.
+
+Very dark, and polished, and deeply carved, and heavily ornamented
+were its wainscotings, and frames, and cornices; out of the new look
+of the streets, which it will take them yet a great while to
+outgrow, she had stepped at once into a grand, and mellow, and
+ancient stateliness.
+
+There were dim old portraits on the walls, and paintings that hinted
+at old mastership filled whole panels; and the tall, high-backed,
+wonderfully wrought oaken chairs had heraldic devices in relief upon
+their bars and corners; and there was a great, round mosaic table,
+in soft, rich, dark colors, of most precious stones; these, in
+turn, hidden with piles of rare engravings.
+
+The floor was of dark woods, inlaid; and sumptuous rugs were put
+about upon it for the feet, each one of which was wide enough to
+call a carpet.
+
+And nothing of it all was _new_; there was nothing in the room but
+some plants in a jardiniere by the window, that seemed to have a bit
+of yesterday's growth upon it.
+
+A great, calm, marble face of Jove looked down from high up, out of
+the shadows.
+
+Underneath sat Rosamond Holabird, holding on to her identity and her
+self-confidence.
+
+Madam Mucklegrand came in plainly enough dressed,--in black; you
+would not notice what she had on; but you would notice instantly the
+consummate usedness to the world and the hardening into the mould
+thereof that was set and furrowed upon eye and lip and brow.
+
+She sailed down upon Rosamond like a frigate upon a graceful little
+pinnace; and brought to within a pace or two of her, continuing to
+stand an instant, as Rosamond rose, just long enough for the shadow
+of a suggestion that it might not be altogether material that she
+should be seated again at all.
+
+But Rosamond made a movement backward to her chair, and laid her
+hand upon its arm, and then Madam Mucklegrand decided to sit down.
+
+"You called about the nurse, I conclude, Miss--Holabird?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am; I thought you had some questions you wished to ask, and
+that I had better come myself. I have her with me, in the carriage."
+
+"Thank you," said Madam Mucklegrand, politely.
+
+But it was rather a _de haut en bas_ politeness; she exercised it
+also toward her footman.
+
+Then followed inquiries about age, and health, and character.
+Rosamond told all she knew, clearly and sufficiently, with some
+little sympathetic touches that she could not help, in giving her
+story.
+
+Madam Mucklegrand met her nowhere, however, on any common ground;
+she passed over all personal interest; instead of two women
+befriending a third in her need, who in turn was to give life to a
+little child waiting helplessly for some such ministry, it might
+have been the leasing of a house, or the dealing about some
+merchandise, that was between them.
+
+Rosamond proposed, at last, to send Jane Jopson in.
+
+Jane and her baby were had in, and had up-stairs; the physician and
+attending nurse pronounced upon her; she was brought down again, to
+go home and dispose of her child, and return. Rosamond, meanwhile,
+had been sitting under the marble Jove.
+
+There was nothing really rude in it; she was there on business; what
+more could she expect? But then she knew all the time, that she too
+was a lady, and was taking trouble to do a kind thing. It was not so
+that Madam Mucklegrand would have been treated at Westover.
+
+Rosamond was feeling pretty proud by the time Madam Mucklegrand came
+down stairs.
+
+"We have engaged the young woman: the doctor quite approves; she
+will return without delay, I hope?"
+
+As if Rosamond were somehow responsible all through.
+
+"I have no doubt she will; good morning, madam."
+
+"Good morning. I am, really, very much obliged. You have been of
+great service."
+
+Rosamond turned quietly round upon the threshold.
+
+"That was what I was very anxious to be," she said, in her perfectly
+sweet and musical voice,--"to the poor woman."
+
+Italics would indicate too coarsely the impalpable emphasis she put
+upon the last two words. But Mrs. Mucklegrand caught it.
+
+Rosamond went away quite as sure of her own self-respect as ever,
+but very considerably cured of Spreadsplendidism.
+
+This was but one phase of it, she knew; there are real folks, also,
+in Spreadsplendid Park; they are a good deal covered up, there, to
+be sure; but they can't help that. It is what always happens to
+somebody when Pyramids are built. Madam Mucklegrand herself was,
+perhaps, only a good deal covered up.
+
+How lovely it was to go down into Orchard Street after that, and
+take tea with Miss Craydocke! How human and true it seemed,--the
+friendliness that shone and breathed there, among them all. How
+kingdom-of-heaven-like the air was, and into what pleasantness of
+speech it was born!
+
+And then Hazel Ripwinkley came over, like a little spirit from
+another blessed society, to tell that "the picture-book things were
+all ready, and that it would take everybody to help."
+
+That was Rosamond's first glimpse of Witch Hazel, who found her out
+instantly,--the real, Holabirdy part of her,--and set her down at
+once among her "folks."
+
+It was bright and cheery in Mrs. Ripwinkley's parlor; you could
+hardly tell whence the cheeriness radiated, either.
+
+The bright German lamp was cheery, in the middle of the round table;
+the table was cheery, covered with glossy linen cut into large,
+square book-sheets laid in piles, and with gay pictures of all
+kinds, brightly colored; and the scissors,--or scissorses,--there
+were ever so many shining pairs of them,--and the little mucilage
+bottles, and the very scrap-baskets,--all looked cozy and
+comfortable, and as if people were going to have a real good time
+among them, somehow.
+
+And the somehow was in making great beautiful, everlasting
+picture-books for the little orphans in Miss Craydocke's Home,--the
+Home, that is, out of several blessed and similar ones that she was
+especially interested in, and where Hazel and Diana had been with
+her until they knew all the little waifs by sight and name and
+heart, and had their especial chosen property among them, as they
+used to have among the chickens and the little yellow ducks at
+Homesworth Farm.
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley was cheery; it might be a question whether all the
+light did not come from her first, in some way, and perhaps it did;
+but then Hazel was luminous, and she fluttered about with quick,
+happy motions, till like a little glancing taper she had shone upon
+and lit up everybody and everything; and Dorris was sunny with clear
+content, and Kenneth was blithe, and Desire was scintillant, as she
+always was either with snaps or smiles; and here came in beaming
+Miss Craydocke, and gay Asenath and her handsome husband; and our
+Rosa Mundi; there,--how can you tell? It was all round; and it was
+more every minute.
+
+There were cutters and pasters and stitchers and binders and every
+part was beautiful work, and nobody could tell which was
+pleasantest. Cutting out was nice, of course; who doesn't like
+cutting out pictures? Some were done beforehand, but there were as
+many left as there would be time for. And pasting, on the fine,
+smooth linen, making it glow out with charming groups and tints of
+flowers and birds and children in gay clothes,--that was
+delightful; and the stitchers had the pleasure of combining and
+arranging it all; and the binders,--Mrs. Ripwinkley and Miss
+Craydocke,--finished all off with the pretty ribbons and the gray
+covers, and theirs being the completing touch, thought _they_ had
+the best of it.
+
+"But I don't think finishing is best, mother," said Hazel, who was
+diligently snipping in and out around rose leaves or baby faces, as
+it happened. "I think beginning is always beautiful. I never want to
+end off,--anything nice, I mean."
+
+"Well, we don't end off this," said Diana. "There's the giving,
+next."
+
+"And then their little laughs and Oo's," said Hazel.
+
+"And their delight day after day; and the comfort of them in their
+little sicknesses," said Miss Craydocke.
+
+"And the stories that have got to be told about every picture," said
+Dorris.
+
+"No; nothing really nice does end; it goes on and on," said Mrs.
+Ripwinkley.
+
+"Of course!" said Hazel, triumphantly, turning on the Drummond light
+of her child-faith. "We're forever and ever people, you know!"
+
+"Please paste some more flowers, Mr. Kincaid," said Rosamond, who
+sat next him, stitching. "I want to make an all-flower book of this.
+No,--not roses; I've a whole page already; this great white lily, I
+think. That's beautiful!"
+
+"Wouldn't it do to put in this laurel bush next, with the bird's
+nest in it?"
+
+"O, those lovely pink and white laurels! Yes. Where did you get such
+pictures, Miss Hazel?"
+
+"O, everybody gave them to us, all summer, ever since we began. Mrs.
+Geoffrey gave those flowers; and mother painted some. She did that
+laurel. But don't call me Miss Hazel, please; it seems to send me
+off into a corner."
+
+Rosamond answered by a little irresistible caress; leaning her head
+down to Hazel, on her other side, until her cheek touched the
+child's bright curls, quickly and softly. There was magnetism
+between those two.
+
+Ah, the magnetism ran round!
+
+"For a child's picture-book, Mrs. Ripwinkley?" said Mrs. Scherman,
+reaching over for the laurel picture. "Aren't these almost
+too exquisite? They would like a big scarlet poppy just as
+well,--perhaps better. Or a clump of cat-o'-nine-tails," she added,
+whimsically.
+
+"There _is_ a clump of cat-o'-nine-tails," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "I
+remember how I used to delight in them as a child,--the real ones."
+
+"Pictures are to _tell_ things," said Desire, in her brief way.
+
+"These little city refugees _must_ see them, somehow," said
+Rosamond, gently. "I understand. They will never get up on the
+mountains, maybe, where the laurels grow, or into the shady swamps
+among the flags and the cat-o'-nine-tails. You have _picked out_
+pictures to give them, Mrs. Ripwinkley."
+
+Kenneth Kincaid's scissors stopped a moment, as he looked at
+Rosamond, pausing also over the placing of her leaves.
+
+Desire saw that from the other side; she saw how beautiful and
+gracious this girl was--this Rosamond Holabird; and there was a
+strange little twinge in her heart, as she felt, suddenly, that let
+there be ever so much that was true and kindly, or even tender, in
+her, it could never come up in her eyes or play upon her lips like
+that she could never say it out sweetly and in due place everything
+was a spasm with her; and nobody would ever look at her just as
+Kenneth Kincaid looked at Rosamond then.
+
+She said to herself, with her harsh, unsparing honesty, that it must
+be a "hitch inside;" a cramp or an awkwardness born in her, that set
+her eyes, peering and sharp, so near together, and put that knot
+into her brows instead of their widening placidly, like Rosamond's,
+and made her jerky in her speech. It was no use; she couldn't look
+and behave, because she couldn't _be_; she must just go boggling and
+kinking on, and--losing everything, she supposed.
+
+The smiles went down, under a swift, bitter little cloud, and the
+hard twist came into her face with the inward pinching she was
+giving herself; and all at once there crackled out one of her sharp,
+strange questions; for it was true that she could not do otherwise;
+everything was sudden and crepitant with her.
+
+"Why need all the good be done up in batches, I wonder? Why can't it
+be spread round, a little more even? There must have been a good
+deal left out somewhere, to make it come in a heap, so, upon you,
+Miss Craydocke!"
+
+Hazel looked up.
+
+"I know what Desire means," she said. "It seemed just so to me,
+_one_ way. Why oughtn't there to be _little_ homes, done-by-hand
+homes, for all these little children, instead of--well--machining
+them all up together?"
+
+And Hazel laughed at her own conceit.
+
+"It's nice; but then--it isn't just the way. If we were all brought
+up like that we shouldn't know, you see!"
+
+"You wouldn't want to be brought up in a platoon, Hazel?" said
+Kenneth Kincaid. "No; neither should I."
+
+"I think it was better," said Hazel, "to have my turn of being a
+little child, all to myself; _the_ little child, I mean, with the
+rest of the folks bigger. To make much of me, you know. I shouldn't
+want to have missed that. I shouldn't like to be _loved_ in a
+platoon."
+
+"Nobody is meant to be," said Miss Craydocke.
+
+"Then why--" began Asenath Scherman, and stopped.
+
+"Why what, dear?"
+
+"Revelations," replied Sin, laconically. "There are loads of people
+there, all dressed alike, you know; and--well--it's platoony, I
+think, rather! And down here, such a world-full; and the sky--full
+of worlds. There doesn't seem to be much notion of one at a time, in
+the general plan of things."
+
+"Ah, but we've got the key to all that," said Miss Craydocke. "'The
+very hairs of your head are all numbered.' It may be impossible with
+us, you know, but not with Him."
+
+"Miss Hapsie! you always did put me down, just when I thought I was
+smart," said Sin Scherman.
+
+Asenath loved to say "Miss Hapsie," now and then, to her friend,
+ever since she had found out what she called her "squee little
+name."
+
+"But the little children, Miss Craydocke," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "It
+seems to me Desire has got a right thought about it."
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley and Hazel always struck the same note. The same
+delicate instinct moved them both. Hazel "knew what Desire meant;"
+her mother did not let it be lost sight of that it was Desire who
+had led the way in this thought of the children; so that the abrupt
+beginning--the little flash out of the cloud--was quite forgotten
+presently, in the tone of hearty understanding and genuine interest
+with which the talk went on; and it was as if all that was generous
+and mindfully suggestive in it had first and truly come from her.
+They unfolded herself for her--these friendly ones--as she could not
+do; out of her bluntness grew a graciousness that lay softly over
+it; the cloud itself melted away and floated off; and Desire began
+to sparkle again more lambently. For she was not one of the kind to
+be meanly or enviously "put out."
+
+"It seemed to me there must be a great many spare little corners
+somewhere, for all these spare little children," she said, "and
+that, lumped up together so, there was something they did not get."
+
+"That is precisely the thing," said Miss Craydocke, emphatically. "I
+wonder, sometimes," she went on, tenderly, "if whenever God makes a
+little empty place in a home, it isn't really on purpose that it
+might be filled with one of these,--if people only thought."
+
+"Miss Craydocke," said Hazel, "how did you begin your beehive?"
+
+"I!" said the good lady. "I didn't. It began itself."
+
+"Well, then, how did you _let_ it begin?"
+
+"Ah!"
+
+The tone was admissive, and as if she had said, "_That_ is another
+thing!" She could not contradict that she had let it be.
+
+"I'll tell you a queer story," she said, "of what they say they used
+to do, in old Roman Catholic times and places, when they wanted to
+_keep up_ a beehive that was in any danger of dwindling or growing
+unprofitable. I read it somewhere in a book of popular beliefs and
+customs about bees and other interesting animals. An old woman once
+went to her friend, and asked her what she did to make her hive so
+gainful. And this was what the old wife said; it sounds rather
+strange to us, but if there is anything irreverent in it, it is the
+word and not the meaning; 'I go,' she said, 'to the priest, and get
+a little round Godamighty, and put it in the hive, and then all goes
+well; the bees thrive, and there is plenty of honey; they always
+come, and stay, and work, when _that_ is there."
+
+"A little round--something awful! what _did_ she mean?" asked Mrs.
+Scherman.
+
+"She meant a consecrated wafer,--the Sacrament. We don't need to put
+the wafer in; but if we let _Him_ in, you see,--just say to Him it
+is his house, to do with as He likes,--He takes the responsibility,
+and brings in all the rest."
+
+Nobody saw, under the knitting of Desire Ledwith's brows, and the
+close setting of her eyes, the tenderness with which they suddenly
+moistened, and the earnestness with which they gleamed. Nobody knew
+how she thought to herself inwardly, in the same spasmodic fashion
+that she used for speech,--
+
+"They Mig up their parlors with upholstery, and put rose-colored
+paper on their walls, and call them _their_ houses; and shut the
+little round awfulness and goodness out! We've all been doing it!
+And there's no place left for what might come in."
+
+Mrs. Scherman broke the hush that followed what Miss Hapsie said.
+Not hastily, or impertinently; but when it seemed as if it might be
+a little hard to come down into the picture-books and the pleasant
+easiness again.
+
+"Let's make a Noah's Ark picture-book,--you and I," she said to
+Desire. "Give us all your animals,--there's a whole Natural History
+full over there, all painted with splendid daubs of colors; the
+children did that, I know, when they _were_ children. Come; we'll
+have everything in, from an elephant to a bumble-bee!"
+
+"We did not mean to use those, Mrs. Scherman," said Desire. "We did
+not think they were good enough. They are _so_ daubed up."
+
+"They're perfectly beautiful. Exactly what the young ones will like.
+Just divide round, and help. We'll wind up with the most wonderful
+book of all; the book they'll all cry for, and that will have to be
+given always, directly after the Castor Oil."
+
+It took them more than an hour to do that, all working hard; and a
+wonderful thing it was truly, when it was done. Mrs. Scherman and
+Desire Ledwith directed all the putting together, and the grouping
+was something astonishing.
+
+There were men and women,--the Knowers, Sin called them; she said
+that was what she always thought the old gentleman's name was, in
+the days when she first heard of him, because he knew so much; and
+in the backgrounds of the same sheets were their country cousins,
+the orangs, and the little apes. Then came the elephants, and the
+camels, and the whales; "for why shouldn't the fishes be put in,
+since they must all have been swimming round sociably, if they
+weren't inside; and why shouldn't the big people be all kept
+together properly?"
+
+There were happy families of dogs and cats and lions and snakes and
+little humming-birds; and in the last part were all manner of bugs,
+down to the little lady-bugs in blazes of red and gold, and the gray
+fleas and mosquitoes which Sin improvised with pen and ink, in a
+swarm at the end.
+
+"And after that, I don't believe they wanted any more," she said;
+and handed over the parts to Miss Craydocke to be tied together.
+For this volume had had to be made in many folds, and Mrs.
+Ripwinkley's blue ribbon would by no means stretch over the back.
+
+And by that time it was eleven o'clock, and they had worked four
+hours. They all jumped up in a great hurry then, and began to say
+good-by.
+
+"This must not be the last we are to have of you, Miss Holabird,"
+said Mrs. Ripwinkley, laying Rosamond's shawl across her shoulders.
+
+"Of course not," said Mrs Scherman, "when you are all coming to our
+house to tea to-morrow night."
+
+Rosamond bade the Ripwinkleys good-night with a most sweet
+cordiality, and thanks for the pleasure she had had, and she told
+Hazel and her mother that it was "neither beginning nor end, she
+believed; for it seemed to her that she had only found a little new
+piece of her world, and that Aspen Street led right out of Westover
+in the invisible geography, she was sure."
+
+"Come!" said Miss Craydocke, standing on the doorsteps. "It is all
+invisible geography out here, pretty nearly; and we've all our
+different ways to go, and only these two unhappy gentlemen to insist
+on seeing everybody home."
+
+So first the whole party went round with Miss Hapsie, and then
+Kenneth and Dorris, who always went home with Desire, walked up
+Hanley Street with the Schermans and Rosamond, and so across through
+Dane Street to Shubarton Place.
+
+But while they were on their way, Hazel Ripwinkley was saying to her
+mother, up in her room, where they made sometimes such long
+good-nights,--
+
+"Mother! there were some little children taken away from you before
+we came, you know? And now we've got this great big house, and
+plenty of things, more than it takes for us."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Don't you think it's expected that we should do something with the
+corners? There's room for some real good little times for somebody.
+I think we ought to begin a beehive."
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley kissed Hazel very tenderly, and said, only,--
+
+"We can wait, and see."
+
+Those are just the words that mothers so often put children off
+with! But Mrs. Ripwinkley, being one of the real folks, meant it;
+the very heart of it.
+
+In that little talk, they took the consecration in; they would wait
+and see; when people do that, with an expectation, the beehive
+begins.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Up Hanley Street, the six fell into pairs.
+
+Mrs. Scherman and Desire, Dorris and Mr. Scherman, Rosamond and
+Kenneth Kincaid.
+
+It only took from Bridgeley Street up to Dane, to tell Kenneth
+Kincaid so much about Westover, in answer to his questions, that he
+too thought he had found a new little piece of his world. What
+Rosamond thought, I do not know; but a girl never gives a young man
+so much as she gave Kenneth in that little walk without having some
+of the blessed consciousness that comes with giving. The sun knows
+it shines, I dare say; or else there is a great waste of hydrogen
+and other things.
+
+There was not much left for poor little Desire after they parted
+from the Schermans and turned the corner of Dane Street. Only a
+little bit of a way, in which new talk could hardly begin, and just
+time for a pause that showed how the talk that had come to an end
+was missed or how, perhaps, it stayed in the mind, repeating itself,
+and keeping it full.
+
+Nobody said anything till they had crossed B---- Street; and then
+Dorris said, "How beautiful,--_real_ beautiful, Rosamond Holabird
+is!" And Kenneth answered, "Did you hear what she said to Mrs.
+Ripwinkley?"
+
+They were full of Rosamond! Desire did not speak a word.
+
+Dorris had heard and said it over. It seemed to please Kenneth to
+hear it again. "A piece of her world!"
+
+"How quickly a true person springs to what belongs to--their life!"
+said Kenneth, using that wrong little pronoun that we shall never be
+able to do without.
+
+"People don't always get what belongs, though," blurted Desire at
+last, just as they came to the long doorsteps. "Some people's lives
+are like complementary colors, I think; they see blue, and live
+red!"
+
+"But the colors are only accidentally--I mean temporarily--divided;
+they are together in the sun; and they join somewhere--beyond."
+
+"I hate beyond!" said Desire, recklessly. "Good-night. Thank you."
+And she ran up the steps.
+
+Nobody knew what she meant. Perhaps she hardly knew herself.
+
+They only thought that her home life was not suited to her, and that
+she took it hard.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+"SESAME; AND LILIES."
+
+
+"I've got a discouragement at my stomach," said Luclarion Grapp.
+
+"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Ripwinkley, naturally.
+
+"Mrs. Scarup. I've been there. There ain't any bottom to it."
+
+"Well?"
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley knew that Luclarion had more to say, and that she
+waited for this monosyllable.
+
+"She's sick again. And Scarup, he's gone out West, spending a
+hundred dollars to see whether or no there's a chance anywhere for a
+_smart_ man,--and that ain't he, so it's a double waste,--to make
+fifty. No girl; and the children all under foot, and Pinkie looking
+miserable over the dishes."
+
+"Pinkie isn't strong."
+
+"No. She's powerful weak. I just wish you'd seen that dirty
+settin'-room fire-place; looks as if it hadn't been touched since
+Scarup smoked his pipe there, the night before he went off a
+wild-gandering. And clo'es to be ironed, and the girl cleared out,
+because 'she'd always been used to fust-class families.' There
+wasn't anything to your hand, and you couldn't tell where to begin,
+unless you began with a cataplasm!"
+
+Luclarion had heard, by chance, of a cataclysm, and that was what
+she meant.
+
+"It wants--creation, over again! Mrs. Scarup hadn't any fit
+breakfast; there was burnt toast, made out of tough bread, that
+she'd been trying to eat; and a cup of tea, half drunk; something
+the matter with that, I presume. I'd have made her some gruel, if
+there'd been a fire; and if there'd been any kindlings, I'd have
+made her a fire; but there 'twas; there wasn't any bottom to it!"
+
+"You had better make the gruel here, Luclarion."
+
+"That's what I come back for. But--Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Don't it appear to you it's a kind of a stump? I don't want to do
+it just for the satisfaction; though it _would_ be a satisfaction to
+plough everything up thorough, and then rake it over smooth; what do
+you think?"
+
+"What have you thought, Luclarion? Something, of course."
+
+"She wants a real smart girl--for two dollars a week. She can't get
+her, because she ain't. And I kind of felt as though I should like
+to put in. Seemed to me it was a--but there! I haven't any right to
+stump _you_."
+
+"Wouldn't it be rather an aggravation? I don't suppose you would
+mean to stay altogether?"
+
+"Not unless--but don't go putting it into my head, Mrs. Ripwinkley.
+I shall feel as if I _was_. And I don't think it goes quite so far
+as that, yet. We ain't never stumped to more than one thing at a
+time. What she wants is to be straightened out. And when things once
+looked _my_ way, she might get a girl, you see. Anyhow, 'twould
+encourage Pinkie, and kind of set her going. Pinkie likes things
+nice; but it's such a Hoosac tunnel to undertake, that she just lets
+it all go, and gets off up-stairs, and sticks a ribbon in her hair.
+That's all she _can_ do. I s'pose 'twould take a fortnight, maybe?"
+
+"Take it, Luclarion," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, smiling. Luclarion
+understood the smile.
+
+"I s'pose you think it's as good as took. Well, perhaps it is--spoke
+for. But it wasn't me, you know. Now what'll you do?"
+
+"Go into the kitchen and make the pudding."
+
+"But then?"
+
+"We are not stumped for then, you know."
+
+"There was a colored girl here yesterday, from up in Garden Street,
+asking if there was any help wanted. I think she came in partially,
+to look at the flowers; the 'sturtiums _are_ splendid, and I gave
+her some. She was awfully dressed up,--for colors, I mean; but she
+looked clean and pleasant, and spoke bright. Maybe she'd come,
+temporary. She seemed taken with things. I know where to find her,
+and I could go there when I got through with the gruel. Mrs. Scarup
+must have that right off."
+
+And Luclarion hurried away.
+
+It was not the first time Mrs. Ripwinkley had lent Luclarion; but
+Miss Grapp had not found a kitchen mission in Boston heretofore. It
+was something new to bring the fashion of simple, prompt, neighborly
+help down intact from the hills, and apply it here to the tangle of
+city living, that is made up of so many separate and unrecognized
+struggles.
+
+When Hazel came home from school, she went all the way up the garden
+walk, and in at the kitchen door. "That was the way she took it
+all," she said; "first the flowers, and then Luclarion and what they
+had for dinner, and a drink of water; and then up-stairs, to
+mother."
+
+To-day she encountered in the kitchen a curious and startling
+apparition of change.
+
+A very dusky brown maiden, with a petticoat of flashing purple, and
+a jacket of crimson, and extremely puzzling hair tied up with knots
+of corn color, stood in possession over the stove, tending a
+fricassee, of which Hazel recognized at once the preparation and
+savor as her mother's; while beside her on a cricket, munching cold
+biscuit and butter with round, large bites of very white little
+teeth, sat a small girl of five of the same color, gleaming and
+twinkling as nothing human ever does gleam and twinkle but a little
+darkie child.
+
+"Where is Luclarion?" asked Hazel, standing still in the middle of
+the floor, in her astonishment.
+
+"I don't know. I'm Damaris, and this one's little Vash. Don't go for
+callin' me Dam, now; the boys did that in my last place, an' I left,
+don' yer see? I ain't goin' to be swore to, anyhow!"
+
+And Damaris glittered at Hazel, with her shining teeth and her quick
+eyes, full of fun and good humor, and enjoyed her end of the joke
+extremely.
+
+"Have you come to _stay_?" asked Hazel.
+
+"'Course. I don' mostly come for to go."
+
+"What does it mean, mother?" Hazel asked, hurrying up into her
+mother's room.
+
+And then Mrs. Ripwinkley explained.
+
+"But what _is_ she? Black or white? She's got straight braids and
+curls at the back of her head, like everybody's"--
+
+"'Course," said a voice in the doorway. "An' wool on top,--place
+where wool ought to grow,--same's everybody, too."
+
+Damaris had come up, according to orders, to report a certain point
+in the progress of the fricassee.
+
+"They all pulls the wool over they eyes, now-days, an sticks the
+straight on behind. Where's the difference?"
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley made some haste to rise and move toward the
+doorway, to go down stairs, turning Damaris from her position, and
+checking further remark. Diana and Hazel stayed behind, and laughed.
+"What fun!" they said.
+
+It was the beginning of a funny fortnight; but it is not the fun I
+have paused to tell you of; something more came of it in the
+home-life of the Ripwinkleys; that which they were "waiting to see."
+
+Damaris wanted a place where she could take her little sister; she
+was tired of leaving her "shyin' round," she said. And Vash, with
+her round, fuzzy head, her bright eyes, her little flashing teeth,
+and her polished mahogany skin,--darting up and down the house "on
+Aarons," or for mere play,--dressed in her gay little scarlet
+flannel shirt-waist, and black and orange striped petticoat,--was
+like some "splendid, queer little fire-bug," Hazel said, and made a
+surprise and a picture wherever she came. She was "cute," too, as
+Damaris had declared beforehand; she was a little wonder at noticing
+and remembering, and for all sorts of handiness that a child of five
+could possibly be put to.
+
+Hazel dressed rag babies for her, and made her a soap-box baby-house
+in the corner of the kitchen, and taught her her letters; and began
+to think that she should hate to have her go when Luclarion came
+back.
+
+Damaris proved clever and teachable in the kitchen; and had, above
+all, the rare and admirable disposition to keep things scrupulously
+as she had found them; so that Luclarion, in her afternoon trips
+home, was comforted greatly to find that while she was "clearing and
+ploughing" at Mrs. Scarup's, her own garden of neatness was not
+being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is
+often done so astutely, that "when you _do_ find a neat, capable,
+colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may
+notice is just as true without the third adjective as with.
+
+Luclarion herself was having a splendid time.
+
+The first thing she did was to announce to Mrs. Scarup that she was
+out of her place for two weeks, and would like to come to her at her
+wages; which Mrs. Scarup received with some such awed and
+unbelieving astonishment as she might have done the coming of a
+legion of angels with Gabriel at their head. And when one strong,
+generous human will, with powers of brain and body under it
+sufficient to some good work, comes down upon it as Luclarion did
+upon hers, there _is_ what Gabriel and his angels stand for, and no
+less sent of God.
+
+The second thing Luclarion did was to clean that "settin'-room
+fire-place," to restore the pleasant brown color of its freestone
+hearth and jambs, to polish its rusty brasses till they shone like
+golden images of gods, and to lay an ornamental fire of chips and
+clean little sticks across the irons. Then she took a wet broom and
+swept the carpet three times, and dusted everything with a damp
+duster; and then she advised Mrs. Scarup, whom the gruel had already
+cheered and strengthened, to be "helped down, and sit there in the
+easy-chair, for a change, and let her take her room in hand." And no
+doctor ever prescribed any change with better effect. There are a
+good many changes that might be made for people, without sending
+them beyond their own doors. But it isn't the doctors who always
+know _what_ change, or would dare to prescribe it if they did.
+
+Mrs. Scarup was "helped down," it seemed,--really up, rather,--into
+a new world. Things had begun all over again. It was worth while to
+get well, and take courage. Those brasses shone in her face like
+morning suns.
+
+"Well, I do declare to Man, Miss Grapp!" she exclaimed; and breath
+and expression failed together, and that was all she could say.
+
+Up-stairs, Luclarion swept and rummaged. She found the sheet and
+towel drawers, and made everything white and clean. She laid fresh
+napkins over the table and bureau tops, and set the little
+things--boxes, books, what not,--daintily about on them. She put a
+clean spread on the bed, and gathered up things for the wash she
+meant to have, with a recklessness that Mrs. Scarup herself would
+never have dared to use, in view of any "help" she ever expected to
+do it.
+
+And then, with Pinkie to lend feeble assistance, Luclarion turned to
+in the kitchen.
+
+It was a "clear treat," she told Mrs. Ripwinkley afterward. "Things
+had got to that state of mussiness, that you just began at one end
+and worked through to the other, and every inch looked new made over
+after you as you went along."
+
+She put the children out into the yard on the planks, and gave them
+tin pans and clothes-pins to keep house with, and gingerbread for
+their dinner. She and Pinkie had cups of tea, and Mrs. Scarup had
+her gruel, and went up to bed again; and that was another new
+experience, and a third stage in her treatment and recovery.
+
+When it came to the cellar, Luclarion got the chore-man in; and when
+all was done, she looked round on the renovated home, and said
+within herself, "If Scarup, now, will only break his neck, or get
+something to do, and stay away with his pipes and his boots and his
+contraptions!"
+
+And Scarup did. He found a chance in some freight-house, and wrote
+that he had made up his mind to stay out there all winter; and Mrs.
+Scarup made little excursions about the house with her returning
+strength, and every journey was a pleasure-trip, and the only misery
+was that at the end of the fortnight Miss Grapp was going away, and
+then she should be "all back in the swamp again."
+
+"No, you won't," said Luclarion; "Pinkie's waked up, and she's going
+to take pride, and pick up after the children. She can do that, now;
+but she couldn't shoulder everything. And you'll have somebody in
+the kitchen. See if you don't. I've 'most a mind to say I'll stay
+till you do."
+
+Luclarion's faith was strong; she knew, she said, that "if she was
+doing at her end, Providence wasn't leaving off at his. Things would
+come round."
+
+This was how they did come round.
+
+It only wanted a little sorting about. The pieces of the puzzle were
+all there. Hazel Ripwinkley settled the first little bit in the
+right place. She asked her mother one night, if she didn't think
+they might begin their beehive with a fire-fly? Why couldn't they
+keep little Vash?
+
+"And then," said Diana, in her quiet way, slipping one of the big
+three-cornered pieces of the puzzle in, "Damaris might go to Mrs.
+Scarup for her two dollars a week. She is willing to work for that,
+if she can get Vash taken. And this would be all the same, and
+better."
+
+Desire was with them when Luclarion came in, and heard it settled.
+
+"How is it that things always fall right together for you, so? How
+_came_ Damaris to come along?"
+
+"You just take hold of something and try," said Luclarion. "You'll
+find there's always a working alongside. Put up your sails, and the
+wind will fill 'em."
+
+Uncle Titus wanted to know "what sort of use a thing like that
+could be in a house?"
+
+He asked it in his very surliest fashion. If they had had any
+motives of fear or favor, they would have been disconcerted, and
+begun to think they had made a mistake.
+
+But Hazel spoke up cheerily,--
+
+"Why, to wait on people, uncle. She's the nicest little
+fetch-and-carrier you ever saw!"
+
+"Humph! who wants to be waited on, here? You girls, with feet and
+hands of your own? Your mother doesn't, I know."
+
+"Well, to wait _on_, then," says Hazel, boldly. "I'm making her a
+baby-house, and teaching her to read; and Diana is knitting scarlet
+stockings for her, to wear this winter. We like it."
+
+"O, if you like it! That's always a reason. I only want to have
+people give the real one."
+
+And Uncle Titus walked off, so that nobody could tell whether _he_
+liked it or not.
+
+Nobody told him anything about the Scarups. But do you suppose he
+didn't know? Uncle Titus Oldways was as sharp as he was blunt.
+
+"I guess I know, mother," said Hazel, a little while after this, one
+day, "how people write stories."
+
+"Well?" asked her mother, looking up, ready to be amused with
+Hazel's deep discovery.
+
+"If they can just begin with one thing, you see, that makes the next
+one. It can't help it, hardly. Just as it does with us. What made me
+think of it was, that it seemed to me there was another little piece
+of our beehive story all ready to put on; and if we went and did
+it,--I wonder if you wouldn't, mother? It fits exactly."
+
+"Let me see."
+
+"That little lame Sulie at Miss Craydocke's Home, that we like so
+much. Nobody adopts her away, because she is lame; her legs are no
+use at all, you know, and she just sits all curled up in that great
+round chair that Mrs. Geoffrey gave her, and sews patchwork, and
+makes paper dolls. And when she drops her scissors, or her thread,
+somebody has to come and pick it up. She wants waiting on; she just
+wants a little lightning-bug, like Vash, to run round for her all
+the time. And we don't, you see; and we've got Vash! And Vash--likes
+paper dolls."
+
+Hazel completed the circle of her argument with great triumph.
+
+"An extra piece of bread to finish your too much butter," said
+Diana.
+
+"Yes. Doesn't it just make out?" said Hazel, abating not a jot of
+her triumph, and taking things literally, as nobody could do better
+than she, upon occasion, for all her fancy and intuition.
+
+"I wonder what Uncle Oldways would say to that," said Diana.
+
+"He'd say 'Faugh, faugh!' But he doesn't mean faugh, faugh, half the
+time. If he does, he doesn't stick to it. Mother," she asked rather
+suddenly, "do you think Uncle Oldways feels as if we oughtn't to
+do--other things--with his money?"
+
+"What other things?"
+
+"Why, _these_ others. Vash, and Sulie, perhaps. Wouldn't he like it
+if we turned his house into a Beehive?"
+
+"It isn't his house," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, "He has given it to me."
+
+"Well,--do you feel 'obligated,' as Luclarion says?'
+
+"In a certain degree,--yes. I feel bound to consider his comfort
+and wishes, as far as regards his enjoyment with us, and fulfilling
+what he reasonably looked for when he brought us here."
+
+"Would that interfere?"
+
+"Suppose you ask him, Hazel?"
+
+"Well, I could do that."
+
+"Hazel wouldn't mind doing anything!" said Diana, who, to tell the
+truth was a little afraid of Uncle Titus, and who dreaded of all
+things, being snubbed.
+
+"Only," said Hazel, to whom something else had just occurred,
+"wouldn't he think--wouldn't it be--_your_ business?"
+
+"It is all your plan, Hazel. I think he would see that."
+
+"And you are willing, if he doesn't care?"
+
+"I did not quite say that. It would be a good deal to think of."
+
+"Then I'll wait till you've thought," said clear-headed little
+Hazel.
+
+"But it fits right on. I can see that. And Miss Craydocke said
+things would, after we had begun."
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley took it into her thoughts, and carried it about with
+her for days, and considered it; asking herself questions.
+
+Was it going aside in search of an undertaking that did not belong
+to her?
+
+Was it bringing home a care, a responsibility, for which they were
+not fitted,--which might interfere with the things they were meant,
+and would be called, to do?
+
+There was room and opportunity, doubtless, for them to do something;
+Mrs. Ripwinkley had felt this; she had not waited for her child to
+think of it for her; she had only waited, in her new, strange
+sphere, for circumstances to guide the way, and for the Giver of
+all circumstance to guide her thought. She chose, also, in the
+things that would affect her children's life and settle duties for
+them, to let them grow also to those duties, and the perception of
+them, with her. To this she led them, by all her training and
+influence; and now that in Hazel, her child of quick insight and
+true instincts, this influence was bearing fruit and quickening to
+action, she respected her first impulses; she believed in them; they
+had weight with her, as argument in themselves. These impulses, in
+young, true souls, freshly responding, are, she knew, as the
+proof-impressions of God's Spirit.
+
+Yet she would think; that was her duty; she would not do a thing
+hastily, or unwisely.
+
+Sulie Praile had been a good while, now, at the Home.
+
+A terrible fall, years ago, had caused a long and painful illness,
+and resulted in her present helplessness. But above those little
+idle, powerless limbs, that lay curled under the long, soft skirt
+she wore, like a baby's robe, were a beauty and a brightness, a
+quickness of all possible motion, a dexterous use of hands, and a
+face of gentle peace and sometimes glory, that were like a
+benediction on the place that she was in; like the very Holy Ghost
+in tender form like a dove, resting upon it, and abiding among them
+who were there.
+
+In one way, it would hardly be so much a giving as a taking, to
+receive her in. Yet there was care to assume, the continuance of
+care to promise or imply; the possibility of conflicting plans in
+much that might be right and desirable that Mrs. Ripwinkley should
+do for her own. Exactly what, if anything, it would be right to
+undertake in this, was matter for careful and anxious reflection.
+
+The resources of the Home were not very large; there were painful
+cases pressing their claims continually, as fast as a little place
+was vacated it could be filled; was wanted, ten times over; and
+Sulie Praile had been there a good while. If somebody would only
+take her, as people were very ready to take--away to happy, simple,
+comfortable country homes, for mere childhood's sake--the round,
+rosy, strong, and physically perfect ones! But Sulie must be lifted
+and tended; she must keep somebody at home to look after her; no one
+could be expected to adopt a child like that.
+
+Yet Hazel Ripwinkley thought they could be; thought, in her
+straightforward, uncounting simplicity, that it was just the
+natural, obvious, beautiful thing to do, to take her home--into a
+real home--into pleasant family life; where things would not crowd;
+where she could be mothered and sistered, as girls ought to be, when
+there are so many nice places in the world, and not so many people
+in them as there might be. When there could be so much visiting, and
+spare rooms kept always in everybody's house, why should not
+somebody who needed to, just come in and stay? What were the spare
+places made for?
+
+"We might have Sulie for this winter," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at
+last. "They would let her come to us for that time; and it would be
+a change for her, and leave a place for others. Then if anything
+made it impossible for us to do more, we should not have raised an
+expectation to be disappointed. And if we can and ought to do more,
+it will be shown us by that time more certainly."
+
+She asked Miss Craydocke about it, when she came home from Z----
+that fall. She had been away a good deal lately; she had been up to
+Z---- to two weddings,--Leslie Goldthwaite's and Barbara Holabird's.
+Now she was back again, and settled down.
+
+Miss Craydocke thought it a good thing wisely limited.
+
+"Sulie needs to be with older girls; there is no one in the Home to
+be companion to her; the children are almost all little. A winter
+here would be a blessing to her!"
+
+"But the change again, if she should have to make it?" suggested
+Mrs. Ripwinkley.
+
+"Good things don't turn to bad ones because you can't have them any
+more. A thing you're not fit for, and never ought to have had, may;
+but a real good stays by; it overflows all the rest. Sulie Praile's
+life could never be so poor again, after a winter here with you, as
+it might be if she had never had it. If you'd like her, let her
+come, and don't be a bit afraid. We're only working by inches, any
+of us; like the camel's-hair embroiderers in China. But it gets put
+together; and it is beautiful, and large, and whole, somewhere."
+
+"Miss Craydocke always knows," said Hazel.
+
+Nobody said anything again, about Uncle Titus. A winter's plan need
+not be referred to him. But Hazel, in her own mind, had resolved to
+find out what was Uncle Titus's, generally and theoretically; how
+free they were to be, beyond winter plans and visits of weeks; how
+much scope they might have with this money and this house, that
+seemed so ample to their simple wants, and what they might do with
+it and turn it into, if it came into their heads or hearts or
+consciences.
+
+So one day she went in and sat down by him in the study, after she
+had accomplished some household errand with Rachel Froke.
+
+Other people approached him with more or less of strategy, afraid of
+the tiger in him; Desire Ledwith faced him courageously; only Hazel
+came and nestled up beside him, in his very cage, as if he were no
+wild beast, after all.
+
+Yet he pretended to growl, even at her, sometimes; it was so funny
+to see her look up and chirp on after it, like some little bird to
+whom the language of beasts was no language at all, and passed by on
+the air as a very big sound, but one that in no wise concerned it.
+
+"We've got Sulie Praile to spend the winter, Uncle Titus," she said.
+
+"Who's Sulie Praile?"
+
+"The lame girl, from the Home. We wanted somebody for Vash to wait
+on, you know. She sits in a round chair, that twists, like yours;
+and she's--just like a lily in a vase!" Hazel finished her sentence
+with a simile quite unexpected to herself.
+
+There was something in Sulie's fair, pale, delicate face, and her
+upper figure, rising with its own peculiar lithe, easily swayed
+grace from among the gathered folds of the dress of her favorite
+dark green color, that reminded--if one thought of it, and Hazel
+turned the feeling of it into a thought at just this moment--of a
+beautiful white flower, tenderly and commodiously planted.
+
+"Well, I suppose it's worth while to have a lame girl to sit up in a
+round chair, and look like a lily in a vase, is it?"
+
+"Uncle Titus, I want to know what you think about some things."
+
+"That is just what I want to know myself, sometimes. To find out
+what one thinks about things, is pretty much the whole finding,
+isn't it?"
+
+"Don't be very metaphysical, please, Uncle Titus. Don't turn your
+eyes round into the back of your head. That isn't what I mean."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"Just plain looking."
+
+"O!"
+
+"Don't you think, when there are places, all nice and ready,--and
+people that would like the places and haven't got 'em,--that the
+people ought to be put into the places?"
+
+"'The shirtless backs put into the shirts?'"
+
+"Why, yes, of course. What are shirts made for?"
+
+"For some people to have thirty-six, and some not to have any," said
+Mr. Oldways.
+
+"No," said Hazel. "Nobody wants thirty-six, all at once. But what I
+mean is, rooms, and corners, and pleasant windows, and seats at the
+table; places where people come in visiting, and that are kept saved
+up. I can't bear an empty box; that is, only for just one pleasant
+minute, while I'm thinking what I can put into it."
+
+"Where's your empty box, now?"
+
+"Our house _was_ rather empty-boxy. Uncle Titus, do you mind how we
+fill it up,--because you gave it to us, you know?"
+
+"No. So long as you don't crowd yourselves out."
+
+"Or you, Uncle Titus. We don't want to crowd you out. Does it crowd
+you any to have Sulie and Vash there, and to have us 'took up' with
+them, as Luclarion says?"
+
+How straight Witch Hazel went to her point!
+
+"Your catechism crowds me just a little, child," said Uncle Titus.
+"I want to see you go your own way. That is what I gave you the
+house for. Your mother knows that. Did she send you here to ask me?"
+
+"No. I wanted to know. It was I that wanted to begin a kind of a
+Beehive--like Miss Craydocke's. Would you care if it was turned
+quite into a Beehive, finally?"
+
+Hazel evidently meant to settle the furthest peradventure, now she
+had begun.
+
+"Ask your mother to show you the deed. 'To Frances Ripwinkley, her
+heirs and assigns,'--that's you and Diana,--'for their use and
+behoof, forever.' I've no more to do with it."
+
+"'Use, and behoof,'" said Hazel, slowly. And then she turned the
+leaves of the great Worcester that lay upon the study table, and
+found "Behoof."
+
+"'Profit,--gain,--benefit;' then that's what you meant; that we
+should make as much more of it as we could. That's what I think,
+Uncle Titus. I'm glad you put 'behoof in."
+
+"They always put it in, child!"
+
+"Do they? Well, then, they don't always work it out!" and Hazel
+laughed.
+
+At that, Mr. Oldways pulled off his spectacles, looked sharp at
+Hazel with two sharp, brown eyes,--set near together, Hazel noticed
+for the first time, like Desire's,--let the keenness turn gradually
+into a twinkle, suffered the muscles that had held his lips so grim
+to relax, and laughed too; his peculiar, up-and-down shake of a
+laugh, in which head and shoulders made the motions, as if he were a
+bottle, and there were a joke inside of him which was to be well
+mixed up to be thoroughly enjoyed.
+
+"Go home to your mother, jade-hopper!" he said, when he had done;
+"and tell her I'm coming round to-night, to tea, amongst your
+bumble-bees and your lilies!"
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+WITH ALL ONE'S MIGHT.
+
+
+Let the grapes be ever so sweet, and hang in plenty ever so low,
+there is always a fair bunch out of reach.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith longed, now, to go to Europe.
+
+At any rate, she was eager to have her daughters go. But, after just
+one year, to take what her Uncle Oldways had given her, in return
+for her settling herself near him, and _un_settle herself, and go
+off to the other side of the world! Besides, what he had given her
+would not do it. That was the rub, after all. What was two thousand
+a year, now-a-days? Nothing is anything, now-a-days. And it takes
+everything to do almost nothing.
+
+The Ledwiths were just as much pinched now as they were before they
+ever heard from Uncle Oldways. People with unlimited powers of
+expansion always are pinched; it is good for them; one of the saving
+laws of nature that keeps things decently together.
+
+Yet, in the pink room of a morning, and in the mellow-tinted
+drawing-room of an evening, it was getting to be the subject
+oftenest discussed. It was that to which they directed the combined
+magnetism of the family will; everything was brought to bear upon it;
+Bridget's going away on Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the
+tubs, the strike-price of coal, and the overcharge of the grocer;
+Florence's music, Helena's hopeless distress over French and German;
+even Desire's listlessness and fidgets; most of all Mrs. Megilp's
+plans, which were ripening towards this long coveted end. She and
+Glossy really thought they should go this winter.
+
+"It is a matter of economy now; everybody's going. The Fargo's and
+the Fayerwerses, and the Hitherinyons have broken all up, and are
+going out to stay indefinitely. The Fayerwerses have been saving up
+these four years to get away, there are so many of them, you know;
+the passage money counts, and the first travelling; but after you
+_are_ over, and have found a place to settle down in,"--then
+followed all the usual assertions as to cheap delights and
+inestimable advantages, and emancipation from all American household
+ills and miseries.
+
+Uncle Oldways came up once in a while to the house in Shubarton
+Place, and made an evening call. He seemed to take apricot-color for
+granted, when he got there, as much as he did the plain, old,
+unrelieved brown at Mrs. Ripwinkley's; he sat quite unconcernedly in
+the grand easy chair that Laura wheeled out for him; indeed, it
+seemed as if he really, after a manner, indorsed everything by his
+acceptance without demur of what he found. But then one must sit
+down on something; and if one is offered a cup of coffee, or
+anything on a plate, one cannot easily protest against sea-green
+china. We do, and we have, and we wear, and we say, a great
+many things, and feel ourselves countenanced and confirmed,
+somehow,--perhaps excused,--because nobody appears surprised or says
+anything. But what should they say; and would it be at all proper
+that they should be surprised? If we only thought of it, and once
+tried it, we might perhaps find it quite as easy and encouraging, on
+the same principle, _not_ to have apricot rep and sea-green china.
+
+One night Mr. Oldways was with them when the talk turned eastwardly
+over the water. There were new names in the paper, of people who
+had gone out in the _Aleppo_, and a list of Americans registered at
+Bowles Brothers,' among whom were old acquaintance.
+
+"I declare, how they all keep turning up there" said Mrs. Ledwith.
+
+"The war doesn't seem to make much difference," said her husband.
+
+"To think how lucky the Vonderbargens were, to be in Paris just at
+the edge of the siege!" said Glossy Megilp. "They came back from
+Como just in time; and poor Mr. Washburne had to fairly hustle them
+off at last. They were buying silks, and ribbons, and gloves, up to
+the last minute, for absolutely nothing. Mrs. Vonderbargen said it
+seemed a sin to come away and leave anything. I'm sure I don't know
+how they got them all home; but they did."
+
+Glossy had been staying lately with the Vonderbargens in New York.
+She stayed everywhere, and picked up everything.
+
+"You have been abroad, Mrs. Scherman?" said Mrs. Ledwith,
+inquiringly, to Asenath, who happened to be calling, also, with her
+husband, and was looking at some photographs with Desire.
+
+"No, ma'am," answered Mrs. Scherman, very promptly, not having
+spoken at all before in the discussion. "I do not think I wish to
+go. The syphon has been working too long."
+
+"The Syphon?"
+
+Mrs. Ledwith spoke with a capital S in her mind; but was not quite
+sure whether what Mrs. Scherman meant might be a line of Atlantic
+steamers or the sea-serpent.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. The emptying back and forth. There isn't much that is
+foreign over there, now, nor very much that is native here. The
+hemispheres have got miserably mixed up. I think when I go 'strange
+countries for to see,' it will have to be Patagonia or Independent
+Tartary."
+
+Uncle Oldways turned round with his great chair, so as to face
+Asenath, and laughed one of his thorough fun digesting laughs, his
+keen eyes half shut with the enjoyment, and sparkling out through
+their cracks at her.
+
+But Asenath had resumed her photographs with the sweetest and
+quietest unconsciousness.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith let her alone after that; and the talk rambled on to
+the schools in Munich, and the Miracle Plays at Oberammergau.
+
+"To think of _that_ invasion!" said Asenath, in a low tone to
+Desire, "and corrupting _that_ into a show, with a run of regular
+performances! I do believe they have pulled down the last unprofaned
+thing now, and trampled over it."
+
+"If we go," said Mrs. Megilp, "we shall join the Fayerwerses, and
+settle down with them quietly in some nice place; and then make
+excursions. We shall not try to do all Europe in three months; we
+shall choose, and take time. It is the only way really to enjoy or
+acquire; and the quiet times are so invaluable for the lessons and
+languages."
+
+Mrs. Megilp made up her little varnishes with the genuine gums of
+truth and wisdom; she put a beautiful shine even on to her limited
+opportunities and her enforced frugalities.
+
+"Mrs. Ledwith, you _ought_ to let Agatha and Florence go too. I
+would take every care of them; and the expense would be so
+divided--carriages, and couriers, and everything--that it would be
+hardly anything."
+
+"It is a great opportunity," Mrs. Ledwith said, and sighed. "But it
+is different with us from what it is with you. We must still be a
+family here, with nearly the same expenses. To be sure Desire has
+done with school, and she doesn't care for gay society, and Helena
+is a mere child yet; if it ever could"--
+
+And so it went on between the ladies, while Mr. Oldways and Mr.
+Ledwith and Frank Scherman got into war talk, and Bismarck policy,
+and French poss--no, _im_-possibilities.
+
+"I don't think Uncle Oldways minded much," said Mrs. Ledwith to
+Agatha, and Mrs. Megilp, up-stairs, after everybody had gone who was
+to go.
+
+"He never minds anything," said Agatha.
+
+"I don't know," said Mrs. Megilp, slowly. "He seemed mightily
+pleased with what Asenath Scherman said."
+
+"O, she's pretty, and funny; it makes no difference what she says;
+people are always pleased."
+
+"We might dismiss one girl this winter," said Mrs. Ledwith, "and
+board in some cheap country place next summer. I dare say we could
+save it in the year's round; the difference, I mean. When you
+weren't actually travelling, it wouldn't cost more than to have you
+here,--dress and all.
+
+"They wouldn't need to have a new thing," said Glossy.
+
+"Those people out at Z---- want to buy the house. I've a great mind
+to coax Grant to sell, and take a slice right out, and send them,"
+said Mrs. Ledwith, eagerly. She was always eager to accomplish the
+next new thing for her children; and, to say the truth, did not much
+consider herself. And so far as they had ever been able, the
+Ledwiths had always been rather easily given to "taking the slice
+right out."
+
+The Megilps had had a little legacy of two or three thousand
+dollars, and were quite in earnest in their plans, this time, which
+had been talk with them for many years.
+
+"Those poor Fayerwerses!" said Asenath to her husband, walking home.
+"Going out now, after the cheap European living of a dozen years
+ago! The ghost always goes over on the last load. I wonder at Mrs.
+Megilp. She generally knows better."
+
+"She'll do," said Frank Scherman. "If the Fayerwerses stick
+anywhere, as they probably will, she'll hitch on to the Fargo's, and
+turn up at Jerusalem. And then there are to be the Ledwiths, and
+their 'little slice.'"
+
+"O, dear! what a mess people do make of living!" said Asenath.
+
+Uncle Titus trudged along down Dorset Street with his stick under
+his arm.
+
+"Try 'em! Find 'em out!" he repeated to himself. "That's what
+Marmaduke said. Try 'em with this,--try 'em with that; a good deal,
+or a little; having and losing, and wanting. That's what the Lord
+does with us all; and I begin to see He has a job of it!"
+
+The house was sold, and Agatha and Florence went.
+
+It made home dull for poor Desire, little as she found of real
+companionship with her elder sisters. But then she was always
+looking for it, and that was something. Husbands and wives, parents
+and children, live on upon that, through years of repeated
+disappointments, and never give up the expectation of that which is
+somewhere, and which these relations represent to them, through all
+their frustrated lives.
+
+That is just why. It _is_ somewhere.
+
+It turned out a hard winter, in many ways, for Desire Ledwith. She
+hated gay company, and the quiet little circle that she had become
+fond of at her Aunt Ripwinkley's was broken somewhat to them all,
+and more to Desire than, among what had grown to be her chronic
+discontents, she realized or understood, by the going away for a
+time of Kenneth Kincaid.
+
+What was curious in the happening, too, he had gone up to "And" to
+build a church. That had come about through the Marchbankses'
+knowledge of him, and this, you remember, through their being with
+the Geoffreys when the Kincaids were first introduced in Summit
+Street.
+
+The Marchbankses and the Geoffreys were cousins. A good many Boston
+families are.
+
+Mr. Roger Marchbanks owned a good deal of property in And. The
+neighborhood wanted a church; and he interested himself actively and
+liberally in behalf of it, and gave the land,--three lots right out
+of the middle of Marchbanks Street, that ran down to the river.
+
+Dorris kept her little room, and was neighborly as heretofore; but
+she was busy with her music, and had little time but her evenings;
+and now there was nobody to walk home with Desire to Shubarton
+Place, if she stayed in Aspen Street to tea. She came sometimes, and
+stayed all night; but that was dreary for Helena, who never
+remembered to shut the piano or cover up the canary, or give the
+plants in the bay window their evening sprinkle, after the furnace
+heat had been drying them all day.
+
+Kenneth Kincaid came down for his Sundays with Dorris, and his work
+at the Mission; a few times he called in at Uncle Oldways' after
+tea, when the family was all together; but they saw him very seldom;
+he gave those Sunday evenings mostly to needed rest, and to quiet
+talk with Dorris.
+
+Desire might have gone to the Mission this winter, easily enough,
+after all. Agatha and Florence and Glossy Megilp were not by to make
+wondering eyes, or smile significant smiles; but there was something
+in herself that prevented; she knew that it would be more than half
+to _get_, and she still thought she had so little to give! Besides,
+Kenneth Kincaid had never asked her again, and she could not go to
+him and say she would come.
+
+Desire Ledwith began to have serious question of what life was ever
+going to be for her. She imagined, as in our early years and our
+first gray days we are all apt to imagine, that she had found out a
+good deal that it was _not_ going to be.
+
+She was not going to be beautiful, or accomplished, or even, she was
+afraid, agreeable; she found that such hard work with most people.
+She was not ever--and that conclusion rested closely upon these
+foregoing--to be married, and have a nice husband and a pretty
+house, and go down stairs and make snow-puddings and ginger-snaps of
+a morning, and have girls staying with her, and pleasant people in
+to tea; like Asenath Scherman. She couldn't write a book,--that,
+perhaps, was one of her premature decisions, since nobody knows till
+they try, and the books are lying all round, in leaves, waiting only
+to be picked up and put together,--or paint a picture; she couldn't
+bear parties, and clothes were a fuss, and she didn't care to go to
+Europe.
+
+She thought she should rather like to be an old maid, if she could
+begin right off, and have a little cottage out of town somewhere, or
+some cosy rooms in the city. At least, she supposed that was what
+she had got to be, and if that were settled, she did not see why it
+might not be begun young, as well as married life. She could not
+endure waiting, when a thing was to be done.
+
+"Aunt Frances," she said one day, "I wish I had a place of my own.
+What is the reason I can't? A girl can go in for Art, and set up a
+studio; or she can go to Rome, and sculp, and study; she can learn
+elocution, and read, whether people want to be read to or not; and
+all that is Progress and Woman's Rights; why can't she set up a
+_home_?"
+
+"Because, I suppose, a house is not a home; and the beginning of a
+home is just what she waits for. Meanwhile, if she has a father and
+a mother, she would not put a slight on _their_ home, or fail of her
+share of the duty in it."
+
+"But nobody would think I failed in my duty if I were going to be
+married. I'm sure mamma would think I was doing it beautifully. And
+I never shall be married. Why can't I live something out for myself,
+and have a place of my own? I have got money enough to pay my rent,
+and I could do sewing in a genteel way, or keep a school for little
+children. I'd rather--take in back stairs to wash," she exclaimed
+vehemently, "than wait round for things, and be nothing! And I
+should like to begin young, while there might be some sort of fun in
+it. You'd like to come and take tea with me, wouldn't you, Aunt
+Frank?"
+
+"If it were all right that you should have separate teas of your
+own."
+
+"And if I had waffles. Well, I should. I think, just now, there's
+nothing I should like so much as a little kitchen of my own, and a
+pie-board, and a biscuit-cutter, and a beautiful baking oven, and a
+Japan tea-pot."
+
+"The pretty part. But brooms, and pails, and wash-tubs, and the back
+stairs?"
+
+"I specified back stairs in the first place, of my own accord. I
+wouldn't shirk. Sometimes I think that real good old-fashioned hard
+work is what I do want. I should like to find the right, honest
+thing, and do it, Aunt Frank."
+
+She said it earnestly, and there were tears in her eyes.
+
+"I believe you would," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "But perhaps the right,
+honest thing, just now, is to wait patiently, with all your might."
+
+"Now, that's good," said Desire, "and cute of you, too, that last
+piece of a sentence. If you had stopped at '_patiently_,' as people
+generally do! That's what exasperates; when you want to do something
+with all your might. It almost seems as if I could, when you put it
+so."
+
+"It is a 'stump,' Luclarion would say."
+
+"Luclarion is a saint and a philosopher. I feel better," said
+Desire.
+
+She stayed feeling better all that afternoon; she helped Sulie
+Praile cut out little panels from her thick sheet of gray
+painting-board, and contrived her a small easel with her round
+lightstand and a book-rest; for Sulie was advancing in the fine
+arts, from painting dollies' paper faces in cheap water colors, to
+copying bits of flowers and fern and moss, with oils, on gray board;
+and she was doing it very well, and with exquisite delight.
+
+To wait, meant something to wait for; something coming by and by;
+that was what comforted Desire to-day, as she walked home alone in
+the sharp, short, winter twilight; that, and the being patient with
+all one's might. To be patient, is to be also strong; this she saw,
+newly; and Desire coveted, most of all, to be strong.
+
+Something to wait for. "He does not cheat," said Desire, low down in
+her heart, to herself. For the child had faith, though she could not
+talk about it.
+
+Something; but very likely not the thing you have seen, or dreamed
+of; something quite different, it may be, when it comes; and it may
+come by the way of losing, first, all that you have been able yet,
+with a vague, whispering hope, to imagine.
+
+The things we do not know! The things that are happening,--the
+things that are coming; rising up in the eastward of our lives below
+the horizon that we can yet see; it may be a star, it may be a
+cloud!
+
+Desire Ledwith could not see that out at Westover, this cheery
+winter night, it was one of dear Miss Pennington's "Next Thursdays;"
+she could not see that the young architect, living away over there
+in the hundred-year-old house on the side of East Hill, a boarder
+with old Miss Arabel Waite, had been found, and appreciated, and
+drawn into their circle by the Haddens and the Penningtons and the
+Holabirds and the Inglesides; and that Rosamond was showing him the
+pleasant things in their Westover life,--her "swan's nest among the
+reeds," that she had told him of,--that early autumn evening, when
+they had walked up Hanley Street together.
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+SWARMING.
+
+
+Spring came on early, with heavy rains and freshets in many parts of
+the country.
+
+It was a busy time at Z----.
+
+Two things had happened there that were to give Kenneth Kincaid more
+work, and would keep him where he was all summer.
+
+Just before he went to Z----, there had been a great fire at West
+Hill. All Mr. Roger Marchbanks's beautiful place was desolate.
+House, conservatories, stables, lovely little vine-covered rustic
+buildings, exquisitely tended shrubbery,--all swept over in one
+night by the red flames, and left lying in blackness and ashes.
+
+For the winter, Mr. Marchbanks had taken his family to Boston; now
+he was planning eagerly to rebuild. Kenneth had made sketches; Mr.
+Marchbanks liked his ideas; they had talked together from time to
+time. Now, the work was actually in hand, and Kenneth was busy with
+drawings and specifications.
+
+Down at the river, during the spring floods, a piece of the bridge
+had been carried away, and the dam was broken through. There were
+new mill buildings, too, going up, and a block of factory houses.
+All this business, through Mr. Marchbanks directly or indirectly,
+fell also into Kenneth's hands.
+
+He wrote blithe letters to Dorris; and Dorris, running in and out
+from her little spring cleanings that Hazel was helping her with,
+told all the letters over to the Ripwinkleys.
+
+"He says I must come up there in my summer vacation and board with
+his dear old Miss Waite. Think of Kentie's being able to give me
+such a treat as that! A lane, with ferns and birches, and the
+woods,--_pine_ woods!--and a hill where raspberries grow, and the
+river!"
+
+Mrs. Ledwith was thinking of her summer plans at this time, also.
+She remembered the large four-windowed room looking out over the
+meadow, that Mrs. Megilp and Glossy had at Mrs. Prendible's, for
+twelve dollars a week, in And. She could do no better than that, at
+country boarding, anywhere; and Mr. Ledwith could sleep at the house
+in Shubarton Place, getting his meals down town during the week, and
+come up and spend his Sundays with them. A bedroom, in addition, for
+six dollars more, would be all they would want.
+
+The Ripwinkleys were going up to Homesworth by and by for a little
+while, and would take Sulie Praile with them. Sulie was ecstatically
+happy. She had never been out of the city in all her life. She felt,
+she said, "as if she was going to heaven without dying." Vash was to
+be left at Mrs. Scarup's with her sister.
+
+Miss Craydocke would be away at the mountains; all the little life
+that had gathered together in the Aspen Street neighborhood, seemed
+about to be broken up.
+
+Uncle Titus Oldways never went out of town, unless on business.
+Rachel Froke stayed, and kept his house; she sat in the gray room,
+and thought over the summers she had had.
+
+"Thee never loses anything out of thy life that has been in," she
+said. "Summer times are like grains of musk; they keep their smell
+always, and flavor the shut-up places they are put away in."
+
+For you and me, reader, we are to go to Z---- again. I hope you like
+it.
+
+But before that, I must tell you what Luclarion Grapp has done.
+
+Partly from the principle of her life, and partly from the spirit of
+things which she would have caught at any rate, from the Ripwinkley
+home and the Craydocke "Beehive,"--for there is nothing truer than
+that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven,--I suppose she had been
+secretly thinking for a good while, that she was having too easy a
+time here, in her first floor kitchen and her garden bedroom; that
+this was not the life meant for her to live right on, without
+scruple or question; and so began in her own mind to expect some
+sort of "stump;" and even to look about for it.
+
+"It isn't as it was when Mrs. Ripwinkley was a widow, and
+poor,--that is, comparative; and it took all her and my contrivance
+to look after the place and keep things going, and paying, up in
+Homesworth; there was something to buckle to, then; but now,
+everything is eased and flatted out, as it were; it makes me
+res'less, like a child put to bed in the daytime."
+
+Luclarion went down to the North End with Miss Craydocke, on errands
+of mercy; she went in to the new Mission, and saw the heavenly
+beauty of its intent, and kindled up in her soul at it; and she came
+home, time after time, and had thoughts of her own about these
+things, and the work in the world there was to do.
+
+She had cleaned up and set things going at Mrs. Scarup's; she
+learned something in doing that, beyond what she knew when she set
+about it; her thoughts began to shape themselves to a theory; and
+the theory took to itself a text and a confirmation and a command.
+
+"Go down and be a neighbor to them that have fallen among thieves."
+
+Luclarion came to a resolution in this time of May, when everybody
+was making plans and the spring-cleaning was all done.
+
+She came to Mrs. Ripwinkley one morning, when she was folding away
+winter clothes, and pinning them up in newspapers, with camphor-gum;
+and she said to her, without a bit of preface,--Luclarion hated
+prefaces,--
+
+"Mrs. Ripwinkley, I'm going to swarm!"
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley looked up in utter surprise; what else could she do?
+
+"Of course 'm, when you set up a Beehive, you must have expected it;
+it's the natural way of things; they ain't good for much unless they
+do. I've thought it all over; I'll stay and see you all off, first,
+if you want me to, and then--I'll swarm."
+
+"Well," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, assenting in full faith, beforehand;
+for Mrs. Ripwinkley, if I need now to tell you of it, was not an
+ordinary woman, and did not take things in an ordinary selfish way,
+but grasped right hold of the inward right and truth of them, and
+believed in it; sometimes before she could quite see it; and she
+never had any doubt of Luclarion Grapp. "Well! And now tell me all
+about it."
+
+"You see," said Luclarion, sitting down in a chair by the window, as
+Mrs. Ripwinkley suspended her occupation and took one by the
+bedside, "there's places in this town that folks leave and give up.
+As the Lord might have left and give up the world, because there was
+dirt and wickedness in it; only He didn't. There's places where it
+ain't genteel, nor yet respectable, to live; and so those places
+grow more disrespectable and miserable every day. They're left to
+themselves. What I think is, they hadn't ought to be. There's one
+clean spot down there now, in the very middle of the worst dirt.
+And it ain't bad to live in. _That's_ started. Now, what I think is,
+that somebody ought to start another, even if its only a little one.
+Somebody ought to just go there and _live_, and show 'em how, just
+as I took and showed Mrs. Scarup, and she's been living ever since,
+instead of scratching along. If some of them folks had a clean,
+decent neighbor to go to see,--to drink tea with, say,--and was to
+catch an idea of her fixings and doings, why, I believe there'd be
+more of 'em,--cleaned up, you know. They'd get some kind of an
+ambition and a hope. Tain't enough for ladies--though I bless 'em in
+my soul for what I've seen 'em do--to come down there of a Fridays,
+and teach and talk awhile, and then go home to Summit Street and
+Republic Avenue, and take up _their_ life again where they left it
+off, that is just as different as heaven is from 'tother place;
+somebody's got to come right down _out_ of heaven, and bring the
+life in, and live it amongst them miserable folks, as the Lord Jesus
+Christ came and did! And it's borne in upon me, strong and clear,
+that that's what's got to be before all's righted. And so--for a
+little piece of it, and a little individual stump--I'm going to
+swarm, and settle, and see what'll come."
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley was looking very intently at Luclarion. Her breath
+went and came hurriedly, and her face turned pale with the grand
+surprise of such a thought, such a plan and purpose, so simply and
+suddenly declared. Her eyes were large and moist with feeling.
+
+"Do you _know_, Luclarion," she exclaimed at last, "do you realize
+what this is that you are thinking of; what a step it would be to
+take,--what a work it would be to even hope to begin to do? Do you
+know how strange it is,--how almost impracticable,--that it is not
+even safe?"
+
+"'Twasn't _safe_ for Him--when He came into the world," Luclarion
+answered.
+
+"Not to say I think there's any comparison," she began again,
+presently, "or that I believe there's anything to be really scared
+of,--except dirt; and you _can_ clean a place round you, as them
+Mission people have done. Why, there ain't a house in Boston nicer,
+or sweeter, or airier even, than that one down in Arctic Street,
+with beautiful parlors and bedrooms, and great clean galleries
+leading round, and skylighted,--_sky_ lighted! for you see the blue
+heaven is above all, and you _can_ let the skylight in, without any
+corruption coming in with it; and if twenty people can do that much,
+or a hundred,--one can do something. 'Taint much, either, to
+undertake; only to be willing to go there, and make a clean place
+for yourself, and a home; and live there, instead of somewheres else
+that's ready made; and let it spread. And you know I've always
+looked forrud to some kind of a house-keep of my own, finally."
+
+"But, Luclarion, I don't understand! All alone? And you couldn't use
+a whole house, you know. Your neighbors would be _inmates_. Why, it
+seems to me perfectly crazy!"
+
+"Now, ma'am, did you ever know me to go off on a tangent, without
+some sort of a string to hold on to? I ain't goin' to swarm all
+alone! I never heard of such a thing. Though if I couldn't _swarm_,
+and the thing was to be done, I say I'd try it. But Savira Golding
+is going to be married to Sam Gallilee, next month; and he's a
+stevedore, and his work is down round the wharves; he's class-leader
+in our church, and a first-rate, right-minded man, or else Savira
+wouldn't have him; for if Savira ain't a clear Christian, and a
+doing woman, there ain't one this side of Paradise. Now, you see,
+Sam Gallilee makes money; he runs a gang of three hundred men. He
+can afford a good house, and a whole one, if he wants; but he's
+going in for a big one, and neighbors. They mean to live nice,--he
+and Savira; and she has pretty, tasty ways; there'll be white
+curtains, and plants blooming in her windows, you may make sure;
+she's always had 'em in that little up-stairs dress-making room of
+hers; and boxes of mignonette and petunias on the ledges; and birds
+singing in a great summer cage swung out against the wall. She's one
+of the kind that reaches out, and can't be kept in; and she knows
+her gifts, and is willing to go and let her light shine where it
+will help others, and so glorify; and Sam, he's willing too, and
+sees the beauty of it. And so,--well, that's the swarm."
+
+"And the 'little round Godamighty in the middle of it,'" said Mrs.
+Ripwinkley, her face all bright and her eyes full of tears.
+
+"_Ma'am_!"
+
+Then Mrs. Ripwinkley told her Miss Craydocke's story.
+
+"Well," said Luclarion, "there's something dear and
+right-to-the-spot about it; but it does sound singular; and it
+certainly ain't a thing to say careless."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Desire Ledwith grew bright and excited as the summer came on, and
+the time drew near for going to Z----. She could not help being
+glad; she did not stop to ask why; summer-time was reason enough,
+and after the weariness of the winter, the thought of Z---- and the
+woods and the river, and sweet evenings and mornings, and gardens
+and orchards, and road-side grass, was lovely to her.
+
+"It is so pleasant up there!" she would keep saying to Dorris; and
+somehow she said it to Dorris oftener than to anybody else.
+
+There was something fitful and impetuous in her little outbursts of
+satisfaction; they noticed it in her; the elder ones among them
+noticed it with a touch of anxiety for her.
+
+Miss Craydocke, especially, read the signs, matching them with
+something that she remembered far back in the life that had closed
+so peacefully, with white hairs and years of a serene content and
+patience, over all unrest and disappointment, for herself. She was
+sorry for this young girl, for whom she thought she saw an
+unfulfilled dream of living that should go by her like some bright
+cloud, just near enough to turn into a baptism of tears.
+
+She asked Desire, one day, if she would not like to go with her,
+this summer, to the mountains.
+
+Desire put by the suggestion hastily.
+
+"O, no, thank you, Miss Craydocke, I must stay with mamma and
+Helena. And besides," she added, with the strict, full truth she
+always demanded of herself, "I _want_ to go to Z----."
+
+"Yes," said Miss Craydocke.
+
+There was something tender, like a shade of pity, in her tone.
+
+"But you would enjoy the mountains. They are full of strength and
+rest. One hardly understands the good the hills do one. David did,
+looking out into them from Jerusalem. 'I will look to the hills,
+from whence cometh my strength.'"
+
+"Some time," said Desire. "Some time I shall need the hills, and--be
+ready for them. But this summer--I want a good, gay, young time. I
+don't know why, except that I shall be just eighteen this year, and
+it seems as if, after that, I was going to be old. And I want to be
+with people I know. I _can_ be gay in the country; there is
+something to be gay about. But I can't dress and dance in the city.
+That is all gas-light and get-up."
+
+"I suppose," said Miss Craydocke, slowly, "that our faces are all
+set in the way we are to go. Even if it is--" She stopped. She was
+thinking of one whose face had been set to go to Jerusalem. Her own
+words had led her to something she had not foreseen when she began.
+
+Nothing of such suggestion came to Desire. She was in one of her
+rare moods of good cheer.
+
+"I suppose so," she said, heedlessly. And then, taking up a thought
+of her own suddenly,--"Miss Craydocke! Don't you think people almost
+always live out their names? There's Sin Scherman; there'll always
+be a little bit of mischief and original naughtiness in her,--with
+the harm taken out of it; and there's Rosamond Holabird,--they
+couldn't have called her anything better, if they'd waited for her
+to grow up; and Barb _was_ sharp; and our little Hazel is witchy and
+sweet and wild-woodsy; and Luclarion,--isn't that shiny and
+trumpety, and doesn't she do it? And then--there's me. I shall
+always be stiff and hard and unsatisfied, except in little bits of
+summer times that won't come often. They might as well have
+christened me Anxiety. I wonder why they didn't."
+
+"That would have been very different. There is a nobleness in
+Desire. You will overlive the restless part," said Miss Craydocke.
+
+"Was there ever anything restless in your life, Miss Craydocke? And
+how long did it take to overlive it? It doesn't seem as if you had
+ever stubbed your foot against anything; and I'm _always_ stubbing."
+
+"My dear, I have stubbed along through fifty-six years; and the
+years had all three hundred and sixty-five days in them. There were
+chances,--don't you think so?"
+
+"It looks easy to be old after it is done," said Desire. "Easy and
+comfortable. But to be eighteen, and to think of having to go on to
+be fifty-six; I beg your pardon,--but I wish it was over!"
+
+And she drew a deep breath, heavy with the days that were to be.
+
+"You are not to take it all at once, you know," said Miss Craydocke.
+
+"But I do, every now and then. I can't help it. I am sure it is the
+name. If they had called me 'Hapsie,' like you, I should have gone
+along jolly, as you do, and not minded. You see you have to _hear_
+it all the time; and it tunes you up to its own key. You can't feel
+like a Dolly, or a Daisy, when everybody says--De-sire!"
+
+"I don't know how I came to be called 'Hapsie,'" said Miss
+Craydocke. "Somebody who liked me took it up, and it seemed to get
+fitted on. But that wasn't when I was young."
+
+"What was it, then?" asked Desire, with a movement of interest.
+
+"Keren-happuch," said Miss Craydocke, meekly. "My father named me,
+and he always called me so,--the whole of it. He was a severe,
+Old-Testament man, and _his_ name was Job."
+
+Desire was more than half right, after all. There was a good deal of
+Miss Craydocke's story hinted in those few words and those two
+ancient names.
+
+"But I turned into 'Miss Craydocke' pretty soon, and settled down. I
+suppose it was very natural that I should," said the sweet old maid,
+serenely.
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.
+
+
+The evening train came in through the little bend in the edge of the
+woods, and across the bridge over the pretty rapids, and slid to its
+stopping-place under the high arches of the other bridge that
+connected the main street of Z---- with its continuation through
+"And."
+
+There were lights twinkling in the shops, where they were making
+change, and weighing out tea and sugar, and measuring calico,
+although outside it was not yet quite dark.
+
+The train was half an hour late; there had been a stoppage at some
+draw or crossing near the city.
+
+Mr. Prendible was there, to see if his lodgers were come, and to get
+his evening paper; the platform was full of people. Old Z----
+acquaintances, many of them, whom Desire and her mother were
+pleased, and Helena excited to see.
+
+"There's Kenneth Kincaid!" she exclaimed, quite loudly, pulling
+Desire's sleeve.
+
+"Hush!" said Desire, twitching away. "How can you, Helena?"
+
+"He's coming,--he heard me!" cried Helena, utterly impenitent.
+
+"I should think he might!" And Desire walked off a little, to look
+among the trunks that were being tumbled from the baggage car.
+
+She had seen him all the time; he had been speaking to Ruth
+Holabird, and helping her up the steps with her parcels. Mr.
+Holabird was there with the little Westover carryall that they kept
+now; and Kenneth put her in, and then turned round in time to hear
+Helena's exclamation and to come down again.
+
+"Can I help you? I'm very glad you are come," he said, cordially.
+
+Well; he might have said it to anybody. Again, well; it was enough
+to say to anybody. Why should Desire feel cross?
+
+He took Helena's bag; she had a budget beside; Mr. Prendible
+relieved Mrs. Ledwith; Desire held on valiantly to her own things.
+Kenneth walked over the bridge with them, and down the street to Mr.
+Prendible's door; there he bade them good-by and left them.
+
+It was nice to be in Z----; it was very sweet here under the
+blossoming elms and locusts; it was nice to see Kenneth Kincaid
+again, and to think that Dorris was coming by and by, and that the
+lanes were green and full of ferns and vines, and that there was to
+be a whole long summer; but there were so many people down there on
+the platform,--there was such a muss always; Ruth Holabird was a
+dear little thing, but there were always so many Ruths about! and
+there was only one cross, stiff, odd, uncomfortable Desire!
+
+But the very next night Kenneth came down and stayed an hour; there
+was a new moon glistening through the delicate elm-tips, and they
+sat out on the piazza and breathed in such an air as they had not
+had in their nostrils for months and months.
+
+The faint, tender light from the golden west in which the new moon
+lay, showed the roof and tower of the little church, Kenneth's first
+beautiful work; and Kenneth told them how pleasant it was up at Miss
+Arabel's, and of the tame squirrels that he fed at his window, and
+of the shady pasture-path that led away over the brook from the
+very door, and up among pines and into little still nooks where dry
+mossy turf and warm gray rocks were sheltered in by scraggy cedars
+and lisping birches, so that they were like field-parlors opening in
+and out from each other with all sorts of little winding and
+climbing passages, between clumps of bayberry bushes and tall ferns;
+and that the girls from Z---- and Westover made morning picnics
+there, since Lucilla Waters had grown intimate with Delia Waite and
+found it out; and that Delia Waite and even Miss Arabel carried
+their dressmaking down there sometimes in a big white basket, and
+stayed all day under the trees. They had never used to do this; they
+had stayed in the old back sitting room with all the litter round,
+and never thought of it till those girls had come and showed them
+how.
+
+"I think there is the best and sweetest neighborliness and most
+beautiful living here in Z----, that I ever knew in any place," said
+Kenneth Kincaid; "except that little piece of the same thing in
+Aspen Street."
+
+Kenneth had found out how Rosamond Holabird recognized Aspen Street
+as a piece of her world.
+
+Desire hated, as he spoke, her spitefulness last night; what she had
+said to herself of "so many Ruths;" why could not she not be pleased
+to come into this beautiful living and make a little part of it?
+
+She was pleased; she would be; she found it very easy when Kenneth
+said to her in that frank intimate way,--"I wish you and your mother
+would come over and see what Dorris will want, and help me a little
+about that room of hers. I told Miss Waite not to bother; just to
+let the old things stand,--I knew Dorris would like them,--and
+anything else I would get for her myself. I mean Dolly shall take a
+long vacation this year; from June right through to September; and
+its 'no end of jolly,' as those English fellows say, that you have
+come too!"
+
+Kenneth Kincaid was fresher and pleasanter and younger himself, than
+Desire had ever seen him before; he seemed to have forgotten that
+hard way of looking at the world; he had found something so
+undeniably good in it. I am afraid Desire had rather liked him for
+his carping, which was what he least of all deserved to be liked
+for. It showed how high and pure his demands were; but his praise
+and admissions were better; it is always better to discern good than
+to fret at the evil.
+
+"I shall see you every day," he said, when he shook hands at
+parting; "and Helena, if you want a squirrel to keep in your pocket
+next winter, I'll begin training one for you at once."
+
+He had taken them right to himself, as if they belonged to him; he
+spoke as if he were very glad that he should see them every day.
+
+Desire whistled over her unpacking; she could not sing, but she
+could whistle like a blackbird. When her father came up on Saturday
+night, he said that her eyes were brighter and her cheeks were
+rounder, for the country air; she would take to growing pretty
+instead of strong-minded, if she didn't look out.
+
+Kenneth came round on Monday, after tea, to ask them to go over to
+Miss Waite's and make acquaintance.
+
+"For you see," he said, "you will have to be very intimate there,
+and it is time to begin. It will take one call to be introduced, and
+another, at least, to get up-stairs and see that beautiful breezy
+old room that can't be lived in in winter, but is to be a delicious
+sort of camping-out for Dolly, all summer. It is all windows and
+squirrel-holes and doors that won't shut. Everything comes in but
+the rain; but the roof is tight on that corner. Even the woodbine
+has got tossed in through a broken upper pane, and I wouldn't have
+it mended on any account. There are swallows' nests in the chimneys,
+and wrens under the gable, and humming-birds in the honeysuckle.
+When Dolly gets there, it will be perfect. It just wants her to take
+it all right into her heart and make one piece of it. _They_ don't
+know,--the birds and the squirrels,--it takes the human. There has
+to be an Adam in every garden of Eden."
+
+Kenneth really chattered, from pure content and delight.
+
+It did not take two visits to get up-stairs. Miss Arabel met them
+heartily. She had been a shy, timid old lady, from long neglect and
+humble living; but lately she had "come out in society," Delia said.
+Society had come after her, and convinced her that she could make
+good times for it.
+
+She brought out currant wine and gave them, the first thing; and
+when Kenneth told her that they were his and Dorris's friends, and
+were coming next week to see about getting ready for her, she took
+them right round through all four of the ground rooms, to the queer
+corner staircase, and up into the "long west chamber," to show them
+what a rackety old place it was, and to see whether they supposed it
+could be made fit.
+
+"Why it's like the Romance of the Forest!" said Helena, delighted.
+"I wish _we_ had come here. Don't you have ghosts, or robbers, or
+something, up and down those stairs, Miss Waite?" For she had spied
+a door that led directly out of the room, from beside the chimney,
+up into the rambling old garret, smelling of pine boards and
+penny-royal.
+
+"No; nothing but squirrels and bees, and sometimes a bat," answered
+Miss Arabel.
+
+"Well, it doesn't want fixing. If you fix it, you will spoil it. I
+shall come here and sleep with Dorris,--see if I don't."
+
+The floor was bare, painted a dark, marbled gray. In the middle was
+a great braided rug, of blue and scarlet and black. The walls were
+pale gray, with a queer, stencilled scroll-and-dash border of
+vermilion and black paint.
+
+There was an old, high bedstead, with carved frame and posts, bare
+of drapery; an antiquated chest of drawers; and a half-circular
+table with tall, plain, narrow legs, between two of the windows.
+There was a corner cupboard, and a cupboard over the chimney. The
+doors of these, and the high wainscot around the room, were stained
+in old-fashioned "imitation mahogany," very streaky and red. The
+wainscot was so heavily finished that the edge running around the
+room might answer for a shelf.
+
+"Just curtains, and toilet covers, and a little low rocking chair,"
+said Mrs. Ledwith. "That is all you want."
+
+"But the windows are so high," suggested Desire. "A low chair would
+bury her up, away from all the pleasantness. I'll tell you what I
+would have, Mr. Kincaid. A kind of dais, right across that corner,
+to take in two windows; with a carpet on it, and a chair, and a
+little table."
+
+"Just the thing!" said Kenneth. "That is what I wanted you for, Miss
+Desire," he said in a pleased, gentle way, lowering his tone to her
+especial hearing, as he stood beside her in the window.
+
+And Desire was very happy to have thought of it.
+
+Helena was spurred by emulation to suggest something.
+
+"I'd have a--hammock--somewhere," she said.
+
+"Good," said Kenneth. "That shall be out under the great butternut."
+
+The great butternut walled in one of the windows with a wilderness
+of green, and the squirrels ran chattering up and down the brown
+branches, and peeping in all day. In the autumn, when the nuts were
+ripe, they would be scrambling over the roof, and in under the
+eaves, to hide their stores in the garret, Miss Arabel told them.
+
+"Why doesn't everbody have an old house, and let the squirrels in?"
+cried Helena, in a rapture.
+
+In ten days more,--the first week of June,--Dorris came.
+
+Well,--"That let in all the rest," Helena said, and Desire, may be,
+thought. "We shan't have it to ourselves any more."
+
+The girls could all come down and call on Dorris Kincaid, and they
+did.
+
+But Desire and Helena had the first of it; nobody else went right up
+into her room; nobody else helped her unpack and settle. And she was
+so delighted with all that they had done for her.
+
+The dais was large enough for two or three to sit upon at once, and
+it was covered with green carpet of a small, mossy pattern, and the
+window was open into the butternut on one side, and into the
+honeysuckle on the other, and it was really a bower.
+
+"I shall live ten hours in one," said Dorris.
+
+"And you'll let me come and sleep with you some night, and hear the
+bats," said Helena.
+
+The Ledwiths made a good link; they had known the Kincaids so well;
+if it had been only Dorris, alone, with her brother there, the
+Westover girls might have been shy of coming often. Since Kenneth
+had been at Miss Waite's, they had already grown a little less free
+of the beautiful woods that they had just found out and begun fairly
+to enjoy last autumn.
+
+But the Ledwiths made a strong party; and they lived close by;
+there were plans continually.
+
+Since Leslie Goldthwaite and Barbara Holabird were married and gone,
+and the Roger Marchbankses were burned out, and had been living in
+the city and travelling, the Hobarts and the Haddens and Ruth and
+Rosamond and Pen Pennington had kept less to their immediate
+Westover neighborhood than ever; and had come down to Lucilla's, and
+to Maddy Freeman's, and the Inglesides, as often as they had induced
+them to go up to the Hill.
+
+Maud Marchbanks and the Hendees were civil and neighborly enough at
+home, but they did not care to "ramify." So it came to pass that
+they were left a good deal to themselves. Olivia and Adelaide, when
+they came up to Westover, to their uncle's, wondered "that papa
+cared to build again; there really wasn't anything to come for; West
+Hill was entirely changed."
+
+So it was; and a very good thing.
+
+I came across the other day, reading over Mr. Kingsley's "Two Years
+Ago," a true word as to social needs in England, that reminded me of
+this that the Holabirds and the Penningtons and the Inglesides have
+been doing, half unconsciously, led on from "next" to next, in
+Z----.
+
+Mr. Kingsley, after describing a Miss Heale, and others of her
+class,--the middle class, with no high social opportunities, and
+with time upon their hands, wasted often in false dreams of life and
+unsatisfied expectations, "bewildering heart and brain with novels,"
+for want of a nobler companionship, says this: "Till in country
+villages, the ladies who interest themselves about the poor will
+recollect that the farmers' and tradesmens' daughters are just as
+much in want of their influence as the charity children and will
+yield a far richer return for their labor, so long will England be
+full of Miss Heales."
+
+If a kindly influence and fellowship are the duty of the
+aristocratic girls of England toward their "next," below, how far
+more false are American girls to the spirit of their country, and
+the blessed opportunities of republican sympathies and equalities,
+when they try to draw invisible lines between themselves and those
+whose outer station differs by but so little, and whose hearts and
+minds, under the like culture with their own, crave, just as they
+do, the best that human intercourse can give. Social science has
+something to do, before--or at least simultaneously with--reaching
+down to the depths where all the wrongs and blunders and
+mismanagements of life have precipitated their foul residuum. A
+master of one of our public schools, speaking of the undue culture
+of the brain and imagination, in proportion to the opportunities
+offered socially for living out ideas thus crudely gathered, said
+that his brightest girls were the ones who in after years, impatient
+of the little life gave them to satisfy the capacities and demands
+aroused and developed during the brief period of school life, and
+fed afterwards by their own ill-judged and ill-regulated reading,
+were found fallen into lives of vice. Have our women, old or young,
+who make and circumscribe the opportunities of social intercourse
+and enjoyment, nothing to search out here, and help, as well, or as
+soon as, to get their names put on committee lists, and manage these
+public schools themselves, which educate and stimulate up to the
+point of possible fierce temptation, and then have nothing more that
+they can do?
+
+It was a good thing for Desire Ledwith to grow intimate, as she did,
+with Rosamond Holabird. There were identical points of character
+between the two. They were both so real.
+
+"You don't want to _play_ anything," Barbara Holabird had said to
+Rosamond once, in some little discussion of social appearances and
+pretensions. "And that's the beauty of you!"
+
+It was the beauty of Desire Ledwith also; only, with Rosamond, her
+ambitions had clothed themselves with a grace and delicateness that
+would have their own perfect and thorough as far as it went; and
+with Desire, the same demands of true living had chafed into an
+impatience with shams and a blunt disregard of and resistance to all
+conventionalisms.
+
+"You are a good deal alike, you two," Kenneth Kincaid said to them
+one day, in a talk they all three happened to have together.
+
+And he had told Rosamond afterward that there was "something grand
+in Desire Ledwith; only grand things almost always have to grow with
+struggles."
+
+Rosamond had told this again to Desire.
+
+It was not much wonder that she began to be happier; to have a
+hidden comfort of feeling that perhaps the "waiting with all her
+might" was nearly over, and the "by and by" was blossoming for her,
+though the green leaves of her own shy sternness with herself folded
+close down about the sweetening place, and she never parted them
+aside to see where the fragrance came from.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+They were going to have a grand, large, beautiful supper party in
+the woods.
+
+Mrs. Holabird and Mrs. Hobart were the matrons, and gave out the
+invitations.
+
+"I don't think I could possibly spend a Tuesday afternoon with a
+little 't,'" said Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks laughing, and tossing down
+poor, dear, good Mrs. Hobart's note upon her table. "It is _rather_
+more than is to be expected!"
+
+"Doctor and Mrs. Hautayne are here, and Dakie Thayne is home from
+West Point. It will be rather a nice party."
+
+"The Holabirds seem to have got everything into their own hands,"
+said Mrs. Marchbanks, haughtily. "It is always a pity when people
+take the lead who are not exactly qualified. Mrs. Holabird _will_
+not discriminate!'
+
+"I think the Holabirds are splendid," spoke up Lily, "and I don't
+think there's any fun in sticking up by ourselves! I can't bear to
+be judicious!"
+
+Poor little Lily Marchbanks had been told a tiresome many times that
+she must be "judicious" in her intimacies.
+
+"You can be _pleasant_ to everybody," said mother and elder sister,
+with a salvo of Christian benignity.
+
+But it is so hard for little children to be pleasant with fence and
+limitation.
+
+"Where must I stop?" Lily had asked in her simplicity. "When they
+give me a piece of their luncheon, or when they walk home from
+school, or when they say they will come in a little while?"
+
+But there came a message back from Boston by the eleven o'clock
+train on the morning of the Tuesday with a little "t," from Mr.
+Marchbanks himself, to say that his brother and Mr. Geoffrey would
+come up with him to dinner, and to desire that carriages might be
+ready afterward for the drive over to Waite's grove.
+
+Mrs. Marchbanks marveled, but gave her orders. Arthur came out
+early, and brought with him his friend Archie Mucklegrand, and these
+two were bound also for the merry-making.
+
+Now Archie Mucklegrand was the identical youth of the lavender
+pantaloons and the waxed moustache, whom Desire, as "Miss Ledwith,"
+had received in state a year and a half ago.
+
+So it was an imposing cavalcade, after all, from West Hill, that
+honored the very indiscriminate pleasure party, and came riding and
+driving in at about six o'clock. There were the barouche and the
+coupé; for the ladies and elder gentlemen, and the two young men
+accompanied them on horseback.
+
+Archie Mucklegrand had been at West Hill often before. He and
+Arthur had just graduated at Harvard, and the Holabirds had had
+cards to their grand spread on Class Day. Archie Mucklegrand had
+found out what a pretty girl--and a good deal more than merely
+pretty--Rosamond Holabird was; and although he might any day go
+over to his big, wild Highland estate, and take upon himself the
+glory of "Sir Archibald" there among the hills and moors,--and
+though any one of a good many pretty girls in Spreadsplendid Park
+and Republic Avenue might be induced, perhaps, if he tried, to go
+with him,--all this did not hinder him from perceiving that up
+here in Z---- was just the most bewitching companionship he had
+ever fallen in with, or might ever be able to choose for himself
+for any going or abiding; that Rosamond Holabird was just the
+brightest, and sweetest, and most to his mind of any girl that he
+had ever seen, and most like "the woman" that a man might dream
+of. I do not know that he quite said it all to himself in
+precisely that way; I am pretty sure that he did not, as yet; but
+whatever is off-hand and young-mannish and modern enough to
+express to one's self without "sposhiness" an admiration and a
+preference like that, he undoubtedly did say. At any rate after
+his Christmas at Z---- with Arthur, and some charade parties they
+had then at Westover, and after Class Day, when everybody had been
+furious to get an introduction, and all the Spreadsplendid girls
+and their mothers had been wondering who that Miss Holabird was
+and where she came from, and Madam Mucklegrand herself--not having
+the slightest recollection of her as the Miss Holabird of that
+early-morning business call, whose name she had just glanced at
+and dropped into an Indian china scrap-jar before she went
+down-stairs--had asked him the same questions, and pronounced that
+she was "an exceedingly graceful little person, certainly,"--after
+all this, Archie had made up his--mind, shall I say? at least his
+inclination, and his moustache--to pursue the acquaintance, and be
+as irresistible as he could.
+
+But Rosamond had learned--things do so play into our lives in a
+benign order--just before that Christmas time and those charades, in
+one of which Archie Mucklegrand had sung to her, so expressively,
+the "Birks of Aberfeldy,"--that Spreadsplendid Park was not, at
+least his corner of it,--a "piece of her world;" and she did not
+believe that Aberfeldy would be, either, though Archie's voice was
+beautiful, and--
+
+          "Bonnie lassie, will ye go?"
+
+sounded very enticing--in a charade.
+
+So she was quite calm when the Marchbanks party came upon the
+ground, and Archie Mucklegrand, with white trousers and a lavender
+tie, and the trim, waxed moustache, looking very handsome in spite
+of his dapperness, found her out in the first two minutes, and
+attached himself to her forthwith in a most undetachable and
+determined manner, which was his way of being irresistible.
+
+They were in the midst of their tea and coffee when the West Hill
+party came. Miss Arabel was busy at the coffee-table between the two
+oaks, pouring out with all her might, and creaming the fragrant cups
+with a rich lavishness that seemed to speak of milky mothers without
+number or limit of supply; and Rosamond, as the most natural and
+hospitable thing to do, conducted the young gentleman as soon as she
+could to that lady, and commended him to her good offices.
+
+These were not to be resisted; and as soon as he was occupied,
+Rosamond turned to attend to others coming up; and the groups
+shifting, she found herself presently a little way off, and
+meanwhile Mrs. Marchbanks and her son had reached the table and
+joined Archie.
+
+"I say, Arthur! O, Mrs. Marchbanks! You never got such coffee as
+this, I do believe! The open air has done something to it, or else
+the cream comes from some supernal cows! Miss Holabird!"
+
+Rosamond turned round.
+
+"I don't see,--Mrs. Marchbanks ought to have some of this coffee,
+but where is your good woman gone?" For Miss Arabel had stepped
+round behind the oak-tree for a moment, to see about some
+replenishing.
+
+In her prim, plain dress, utterly innocent of style or _bias_, and
+her zealous ministry, good Miss Arabel might easily be taken for
+some comfortable, superior old servant; but partly from a sudden
+sense of fun,--Mrs. Marchbanks standing there in all her elegant
+dignity,--and partly from a jealous chivalry of friendship, Rosamond
+would not let it pass so.
+
+"Good woman? Hush! she is one of our hostesses, the owner of the
+ground, and a dear friend of mine. Here she is. Miss Waite, let me
+introduce Mr. Archibald Mucklegrand. Mrs. Marchbanks will like some
+coffee, please."
+
+Which Mrs. Marchbanks took with a certain look of amazement, that
+showed itself subtilely in a slight straightening of the lips and an
+expansion of the nostrils. She did not _sniff_; she was a great deal
+too much a lady; she was Mrs. Marchbanks, but if she had been Mrs.
+Higgin, and had felt just so, she would have sniffed.
+
+Somebody came up close to Rosamond on the other side.
+
+"That was good," said Kenneth Kincaid. "Thank you for that, Miss
+Rosamond."
+
+"Will you have some more?" asked Rosamond, cunningly, pretending to
+misunderstand, and reaching her hand to take his empty cup.
+
+"One mustn't ask for all one would like," said Kenneth,
+relinquishing the cup, and looking straight in her eyes.
+
+Rosamond's eyes fell; she had no rejoinder ready; it was very well
+that she had the cup to take care of, and could turn away, for she
+felt a very foolish color coming up in her face.
+
+She made herself very busy among the guests. Archie Mucklegrand
+stayed by, and spoke to her every time he found a chance. At last,
+when people had nearly done eating and drinking, he asked her if she
+would not show him the path down to the river.
+
+"It must be beautiful down there under the slope," he said.
+
+She called Dorris and Desire, then, and Oswald Megilp, who was with
+them. He was spending a little time here at the Prendibles, with his
+boat on the river, as he had used to do. When he could take an
+absolute vacation, he was going away with a pedestrian party, among
+the mountains. There was not much in poor Oswald Megilp, but Desire
+and Rosamond were kind to him now that his mother was away.
+
+As they all walked down the bank among the close evergreens, they
+met Mr. Geoffrey and Mr. Marchbanks, with Kenneth Kincaid, coming
+up. Kenneth came last, and the two parties passed each other single
+file, in the narrow pathway.
+
+Kenneth paused as he came close to Rosamond, holding back a bough
+for her.
+
+"I have something very nice to tell you," he whispered, "by and by.
+But it is a secret, as yet. Please don't stay down there very long."
+
+Nobody heard the whisper but Rosamond; if they could have done so,
+he would not have whispered. Archie Mucklegrand was walking rather
+sulkily along before; he had not cared for a party to be made up
+when he asked Rosamond to go down to the river with him. Desire and
+Dorris had found some strange blossom among the underbrush, and were
+stopping for it; and Oswald Megilp was behind them. For a few
+seconds, Kenneth had Rosamond quite to himself.
+
+The slight delay had increased the separation between her and Archie
+Mucklegrand, for he had kept steadily on in his little huff.
+
+"I do not think we shall be long," said Rosamond, glancing after
+him, and looking up, with her eyes bright. She was half merry with
+mischief, and half glad with a quieter, deeper pleasure, at
+Kenneth's words.
+
+He would tell her something in confidence; something that he was
+glad of; he wanted her to know it while it was yet a secret; she had
+not the least guess what it could be; but it was very "nice"
+already. Rosamond always did rather like to be told things first; to
+have her friends confide in and consult with her, and rely upon her
+sympathy; she did not stop to separate the old feeling which she was
+quite aware of in herself, from something new that made it
+especially beautiful that Kenneth Kincaid should so confide and
+rely.
+
+Rosamond was likely to have more told her to-night than she quite
+dreamed of.
+
+"Desire!"
+
+They heard Mrs. Ledwith's voice far back among the trees.
+
+Desire answered.
+
+"I want you, dear!"
+
+"Something about shawls and baskets, I suppose," said Desire,
+turning round, perhaps a little the more readily that Kenneth was
+beside her now, going back also.
+
+Dorris and Oswald Megilp, finding there was a move to return, and
+being behind Desire in the pathway, turned also, as people will who
+have no especial motive for going one way rather than another; and
+so it happened that after all Rosamond and Archie Mucklegrand walked
+on down the bank to the river together, by themselves.
+
+Archie's good humor returned quickly.
+
+"I am glad they are gone; it was such a fuss having so many," he
+said.
+
+"We shall have to go back directly; they are beginning to break up,"
+said Rosamond.
+
+And then, coming out to the opening by the water, she began to talk
+rather fast about the prettiness of the view, and to point out the
+bridge, and the mills, and the shadow of East Hill upon the water,
+and the curve of the opposite shore, and the dip of the shrubs and
+their arched reflections. She seemed quite determined to have all
+the talk to herself.
+
+Archie Mucklegrand played with his stick, and twisted the end of
+his moustache. Men never ought to allow themselves to learn that
+trick. It always comes back upon them when it makes them look most
+foolish.
+
+Archie said nothing, because there was so much he wanted to say, and
+he did not know how to begin.
+
+He knew his mother and sister would not like it,--as long as they
+could help it, certainly,--therefore he had suddenly made up his
+mind that there should be no such interval. He could do as he
+pleased; was he not Sir Archibald? And there was his Boston
+grandfather's property, too, of which a large share had been left
+outright to him; and he had been twenty-one these six months. There
+was nothing to hinder; and he meant to tell Rosamond Holabird that
+he liked her better than any other girl in the world. Somebody else
+would be telling her so, if he didn't; he could see how they all
+came round her; perhaps it might be that tall, quiet, cheeky looking
+fellow,--that Kincaid. He would be before him, at any rate.
+
+So he stood and twisted his moustache, and said nothing,--nothing, I
+mean, except mere little words of assent and echo to Rosamond's
+chatter about the pretty view.
+
+At last,--"You are fond of scenery, Miss Holabird?"
+
+Rosamond laughed.
+
+"O yes, I suppose I am; but we don't call this scenery. It is just
+pleasantness,--beauty. I don't think I quite like the word
+'scenery.' It seems artificial,--got up for outside effect. And the
+most beautiful things do not speak from the outside, do they? I
+never travelled, Mr. Mucklegrand. I have just lived here, until I
+have lived _into_ things, or they into me. I rather think it is
+travelling, skimming about the world in a hurry, that makes people
+talk about 'scenery.' Isn't it?"
+
+"I dare say. I don't care for skimming, myself. But I like to go to
+nice places, and stay long enough to get into them, as you say. I
+mean to go to Scotland next year. I've a place there among the hills
+and lochs, Miss Rosamond."
+
+"Yes. I have heard so. I should think you would wish to go and see
+it."
+
+"I'll tell you what I wish, Miss Holabird!" he said suddenly,
+letting go his moustache, and turning round with sufficient
+manfulness, and facing her. "I suppose there is a more gradual and
+elegant way of saying it; but I believe straightforward is as good
+as any. I wish you cared for me as I care for you, and then you
+would go with me."
+
+Rosamond was utterly confounded. She had not imagined that it could
+be hurled at her, this fashion; she thought she could parry and put
+aside, if she saw anything coming. She was bewildered and breathless
+with the shock of it; she could only blindly, and in very foolish
+words, hurl it back.
+
+"O, dear, no!" she exclaimed, her face crimson. "I mean--I don't--I
+couldn't! I beg your pardon, Mr. Mucklegrand; you are very good; I
+am very sorry; but I wish you hadn't said so. We had better go
+back."
+
+"No," said Archie Mucklegrand, "not yet. I've said it now. I said it
+like a moon calf, but I mean it like a man. Won't you--can't you--be
+my wife, Rosamond? I must know that."
+
+"No, Mr. Mucklegrand," answered Rosamond, quite steadily now and
+gently. "I could not be. We were never meant for each other. You
+will think so yourself next year,--by the time you go to Scotland."
+
+"I shall never think so."
+
+Of course he said that; young men always do; they mean it at the
+moment, and nothing can persuade them otherwise.
+
+"I told you I had lived right here, and grown into these things, and
+they into me," said Rosamond, with a sweet slow earnestness, as if
+she thought out while she explained it; and so she did; for the
+thought and meaning of her life dawned upon her with a new
+perception, as she stood at this point and crisis of it in the
+responsibility of her young womanhood. "And these, and all the
+things that have influenced me, have given my life its direction;
+and I can see clearly that it was never meant to be your way. I do
+not know what it will be; but I know yours is different. It would be
+wrenching mine to turn it so."
+
+"But I would turn mine for you," said Archie.
+
+"You couldn't. Lives _grow_ together. They join beforehand, if they
+join at all. You like me, perhaps,--just what you see of me; but you
+do not know me, nor I you. If it--this--were meant, we should."
+
+"Should what?"
+
+"Know. Be sure."
+
+"I am sure of what I told you."
+
+"And I thank you very much; but I do not--I never could--belong to
+you."
+
+What made Rosamond so wise about knowing and belonging?
+
+She could not tell, herself; she had never thought it out before;
+but she seemed to see it very clearly now. She did not belong to
+Archie Mucklegrand, nor he to her; he was mistaken; their lives had
+no join; to make them join would be a force, a wrenching.
+
+Archie Mucklegrand did not care to have it put on such deep ground.
+He liked Rosamond; he wanted her to like him; then they should be
+married, of coarse, and go to Scotland, and have a good time; but
+this quiet philosophy cooled him somewhat. As they walked up the
+bank together, he wondered at himself a little that he did not feel
+worse about it. If she had been coquettish, or perverse, she might
+have been all the more bewitching to him. If he had thought she
+liked somebody else better, he might have been furiously jealous;
+but "her way of liking a fellow would be a slow kind of a way, after
+all." That was the gist of his thought about it; and I believe that
+to many very young men, at the age of waxed moustaches and German
+dancing, that "slow kind of a way" in a girl is the best possible
+insurance against any lasting damage that their own enthusiasm might
+suffer.
+
+He had not been contemptible in the offering of his love; his best
+had come out at that moment; if it does not come out then,
+somehow,--through face and tone, in some plain earnestness or simple
+nobleness, if not in fashion of the spoken word as very well it may
+not,--it must be small best that the man has in him.
+
+Rosamond's simple saying of the truth, as it looked to her in that
+moment of sure insight, was the best help she could have given him.
+Truth is always the best help. He did not exactly understand the
+wherefore, as she understood it; but the truth touched him
+nevertheless, in the way that he could perceive. They did not
+"belong" to each other.
+
+And riding down in the late train that evening, Archie Mucklegrand
+said to himself, drawing a long breath,--"It would have been an
+awful tough little joke, after all, telling it to the old lady!"
+
+"Are you too tired to walk home?" Kenneth Kincaid asked of Rosamond,
+helping her put the baskets in the carriage.
+
+Dakie Thayne had asked Ruth the same question five minutes before,
+and they two had gone on already. Are girls ever too tired to walk
+home after a picnic, when the best of the picnic is going to walk
+home with them? Of course Rosamond was not too tired; and Mrs.
+Holabird had the carryall quite to herself and her baskets.
+
+They took the River Road, that was shady all the way, and sweet now
+with the dropping scents of evening; it was a little longer, too, I
+think, though that is one of the local questions that have never yet
+been fully decided.
+
+"How far does Miss Waite's ground run along the river?" asked
+Kenneth, taking Rosamond's shawl over his arm.
+
+"Not far; it only just touches; it runs back and broadens toward the
+Old Turnpike. The best of it is in those woods and pastures."
+
+"So I thought. And the pastures are pretty much run out."
+
+"I suppose so. They are full of that lovely gray crackling moss."
+
+"Lovely for picnics. Don't you think Miss Waite would like to sell?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, if she could. That is her dream; what she has been
+laying up for her old age: to turn the acres into dollars, and build
+or buy a little cottage, and settle down safe. It is all she has in
+the world, except her dressmaking."
+
+"Mr. Geoffrey and Mr. Marchbanks want to buy. They will offer her
+sixteen thousand dollars. That is the secret,--part of it."
+
+"O, Mr. Kincaid! How glad,--how _sorry_, I can't help being, too!
+Miss Waite to be so comfortable! And never to have her dear old
+woods to picnic in any more! I suppose they want to make streets
+and build it all up."
+
+"Not all. I'll tell you. It is a beautiful plan. Mr. Geoffrey wants
+to build a street of twenty houses,--ten on a side,--with just a
+little garden plot for each, and leave the woods behind for a piece
+of nature for the general good,--a real Union Park; a place for
+children to play in, and grown folks to rest and walk and take tea
+in, if they choose; but for nobody to change or meddle with any
+further. And these twenty houses to be let to respectable persons of
+small means, at rents that will give him seven per cent, for his
+whole outlay. Don't you see? Young people, and people like Miss
+Waite herself, who don't want _much_ house-room, but who want it
+nice and comfortable, and will keep it so, and who _do_ want a
+little of God's world-room to grow in, that they can't get in the
+crowded town streets, where the land is selling by the foot to be
+all built over with human packing-cases, and where they have to pay
+as much for being shut up and smothered, as they will out here to
+live and breathe. That Mr. Geoffrey is a glorious man, Rosamond! He
+is doing just this same thing in the edges of three or four other
+towns, buying up the land just before it gets too dear, to save for
+people who could not save it for themselves. He is providing for a
+class that nobody seems to have thought of,--the nice, narrow-pursed
+people, and the young beginners, who get married and take the world
+in the old-fashioned way."
+
+He had no idea he had called her "Rosamond," till he saw the color
+shining up so in her face verifying the name. Then it flashed out
+upon him as he sent his thought back through the last few sentences
+that he had spoken.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said, suddenly. "But I was so full of this
+beautiful doing,--and I always think of you so! Is there a sin in
+that?"
+
+Rosamond colored deeper yet, and Kenneth grew more bold. He had
+spoken it without plan; it had come of itself.
+
+"I can't help it now. I shall say it again, unless you tell me not!
+Rosamond! I shall have these houses to build. I am getting ever so
+much to do. Could you begin the world with me, Rosamond?"
+
+Rosamond did not say a word for a full minute. She only walked
+slowly by his side, her beautiful head inclined gently, shyly; her
+sweet face all one bloom, as faces never bloom but once.
+
+Then she turned toward him and put out her hand.
+
+"I will begin the world with you," she said.
+
+And their world--that was begun for them before they were
+born--lifted up its veil and showed itself to them, bright in the
+eternal morning.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Desire Ledwith walked home all alone. She left Dorris at Miss
+Waite's, and Helena had teased to stay with her. Mrs. Ledwith had
+gone home among the first, taking a seat offered her in Mrs. Tom
+Friske's carriage to East Square; she had a headache, and was tired.
+
+Desire felt the old, miserable questions coming up, tempting her.
+
+Why?
+
+Why was she left out,--forgotten? Why was there nothing, very much,
+in any of this, for her?
+
+Yet underneath the doubting and accusing, something lived--stayed
+by--to rebuke it; rose up above it finally, and put it down, though
+with a thrust that hurt the heart in which the doubt was trampled.
+
+Wait. Wait--with all your might!
+
+Desire could do nothing very meekly; but she could even _wait_ with
+all her might. She put her foot down with a will, at every step.
+
+"I was put here to be Desire Ledwith," she said, relentlessly, to
+herself; "not Rosamond Holabird, nor even Dolly. Well, I suppose I
+can stay put, and _be_! If things would only _let_ me be!"
+
+But they will not. Things never do, Desire.
+
+They are coming, now, upon you. Hard things,--and all at once.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+ALL AT ONCE.
+
+
+There was a Monday morning train going down from Z----.
+
+Mr. Ledwith and Kenneth Kincaid were in it, reading the morning
+papers, seated side by side.
+
+It was nearly a week since the picnic, but the engagement of
+Rosamond and Kenneth had not transpired. Mr. Holabird had been away
+in New York. Of course nothing was said beyond Mrs. Holabird and
+Ruth and Dolly Kincaid, until his return. But Kenneth carried a
+happy face about with him, in the streets and in the cars and about
+his work; and his speech was quick and bright with the men he met
+and had need to speak to. It almost told itself; people might have
+guessed it, if they had happened, at least to see the _two_ faces in
+the same day, and if they were alive to sympathetic impressions of
+other people's pain or joy. There are not many who stop to piece
+expressions, from pure sympathy, however; they are, for the most
+part, too busy putting this and that together for themselves.
+
+Desire would have guessed it in a minute; but she saw little of
+either in this week. Mrs. Ledwith was not well, and there was a
+dress to be made for Helena.
+
+Kenneth Kincaid's elder men friends said of him, when they saw him
+in these days, "That's a fine fellow; he is doing very well." They
+could read that; he carried it in his eye and in his tone and in his
+step, and it was true.
+
+It was a hot morning; it would be a stifling day in the city. They
+sat quiet while they could, in the cars, taking the fresh air of the
+fields and the sea reaches, reading the French news, and saying
+little.
+
+They came almost in to the city terminus, when the train stopped.
+Not at a station. There were people to alight at the last but one;
+these grew impatient after a few minutes, and got out and walked.
+
+The train still waited.
+
+Mr. Ledwith finished a column he was reading, and then looked up, as
+the conductor came along the passage.
+
+"What is the delay?" he asked of him.
+
+"Freight. Got such a lot of it. Takes a good while to handle."
+
+Freight outward bound. A train making up.
+
+Mr. Ledwith turned to his newspaper again.
+
+Ten minutes went by. Kenneth Kincaid got up and went out, like many
+others. They might be kept there half an hour.
+
+Mr. Ledwith had read all his paper, and began to grow impatient. He
+put his head out at the window, and looked and listened. Half the
+passengers were outside. Brake-men were walking up and down.
+
+"Has he got a flag out there?" says the conductor to one of these.
+
+"Don't know. Can't see. Yes, he has; I heard him whistle brakes."
+
+Just then, their own bell sounded, and men jumped on board. Kenneth
+Kincaid came back to his seat.
+
+Behind, there was a long New York train coming in.
+
+Mr. Ledwith put his head out again, and looked back. All right;
+there had been a flag; the train had slackened just beyond a curve.
+
+But why will people do such things? What is the use of asking? Mr.
+Ledwith still looked out; he could not have told you why.
+
+A quicker motion; a darkening of the window; a freight car standing
+upon a siding, close to the switch, as they passed by; a sudden,
+dull blow, half unheard in the rumble of the train. Women, sitting
+behind, sprang up,--screamed; one dropped, fainting: they had seen a
+ghastly sight; warm drops of blood flew in upon them; the car was in
+commotion.
+
+Kenneth Kincaid, with an exclamation of horror, clutched hold of a
+lifeless body that fell--was thrust--backward beside him; the poor
+head fractured, shattered, against the fatal window frame.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The eleven o'clock train came out.
+
+People came up the street,--a group of gentlemen, three or
+four,--toward Mr. Prendible's house.
+
+Desire sat in a back window behind the blinds, busy. Mrs. Ledwith
+was lying on the bed.
+
+Steps came in at the house door.
+
+There was an exclamation; a hush. Mr. Prendible's voice, Kenneth
+Kincaid's, Mr. Dimsey's, the minister's.
+
+"O! How? "--Mrs. Prendible's voice, now.
+
+"Take care!"
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+Mrs. Ledwith heard.
+
+"What is the matter?"--springing up, with a sudden instinct of
+precognition.
+
+Desire had not seen or heard till now. She dropped her work.
+
+"What is it, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Ledwith was up, upon the floor; in the doorway out in the
+passage; trembling; seized all over with a horrible dread and vague
+knowledge.
+
+"_Tell_ me what it is!" she cried, to those down below.
+
+They were all there upon the staircase; Mrs. Prendible furthest up.
+
+"O, Mrs. Ledwith!" she cried. "_Don't_ be frightened! _Don't_ take
+on! Take it easy,--do!"
+
+Desire rushed down among them; past Mrs. Prendible, past the
+minister, straight to Kenneth Kincaid.
+
+Kenneth took her right in his arms, and carried her into a little
+room below.
+
+"There could have been no pain," he said, tenderly. "It was the
+accident of a moment. Be strong,--be patient, dear!"
+
+There had been tender words natural to his lips lately. It was not
+strange that in his great pity he used them now.
+
+"My father!" gasped Desire.
+
+"Yes; your father. It was our Father's will."
+
+"Help me to go to my mother!"
+
+She took his hand, half blind, almost reeling.
+
+And then they all, somehow, found themselves up-stairs.
+
+There were moans of pain; there were words of prayer. We have no
+right there. It is all told.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Be strong,--be patient, dear!"
+
+It came back, in the midst of the darkness, the misery; it helped
+her through those days; it made her strong for her mother. It
+comforted her, she hardly knew how much; but O, how cruel it seemed
+afterward!
+
+They went directly down to Boston. Mr. Ledwith was buried from their
+own house. It was all over; and now, what should they do? Uncle
+Titus came to see them. Mrs. Ripwinkley came right back from
+Homesworth. Dorris Kincaid left her summer-time all behind, and
+came to stay with them a week in Shubarton Place. Mrs. Ledwith
+craved companionship; her elder daughters were away; there were
+these five weeks to go by until she could hear from them. She would
+not read their letters that came now, full of chat and travel.
+
+Poor Laura! her family scattered; her dependence gone; her life all
+broken down in a moment!
+
+Dorris Kincaid did not speak of Kenneth and Rosamond. How could she
+bring news of others' gladness into that dim and sorrowful house?
+
+Luclarion Grapp shut up her rooms, left her plants and her birds
+with Mrs. Gallilee, and came up to Shubarton Place in the beginning.
+There were no servants there; everything was adrift; the terrible
+blows of life take people between the harness, most unprovided,
+unawares.
+
+It was only for a little while, until they could hear from the
+girls, and make plans. Grant Ledwith's income died with him; there
+was ten thousand dollars, life insurance; that would give them a
+little more than a sixth part of what his salary had been; and there
+were the two thousand a year of Uncle Titus; and the house, on which
+there was a twelve thousand dollar mortgage.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith had spent her life in cutting and turning and planning;
+after the first shock was over, even her grief was counterpoised and
+abated, by the absorption of her thoughts into the old channels.
+What they should do, how they should live, what they could have; how
+it should be contrived and arranged. Her mind busied itself with all
+this, and her trouble was veiled,--softened. She had a dozen
+different visions and schemes, projected into their details of
+residence, establishment, dress, ordering,--before the letters
+came, bringing back the first terribleness in the first reception of
+and response to it, of her elder children.
+
+It was so awful to have them away,--on the other side of the world!
+If they were only once all together again! Families ought not to
+separate. But then, it had been for their good; how could she have
+imagined? She supposed she should have done the same again, under
+the same circumstances.
+
+And then came Mrs. Megilp's letter, delayed a mail, as she would
+have delayed entering the room, if they had been rejoined in their
+grief, until the family had first been gathered together with their
+tears and their embraces.
+
+Then she wrote,--as she would have come in; and her letter, as
+her visit would have been, was after a few words of tender
+condolence,--and they were very sweet and tender, for Mrs. Megilp
+knew how to lay phrases like illuminating gold-leaf upon her
+meaning,--eminently practical and friendly, full of judicious, not
+to say mitigating, suggestions.
+
+It was well, she thought, that Agatha and Florence were with her.
+They had been spared so much; and perhaps if all this had happened
+first, they might never have come. As to their return, she thought
+it would be a pity; "it could not make it really any better for
+you," she said; "and while your plans are unsettled, the fewer you
+are, the more easily you will manage. It seems hard to shadow their
+young lives more than is inevitable; and new scenes and interests
+are the very best things for them; their year of mourning would be
+fairly blotted out at home, you know. For yourself, poor friend, of
+course you cannot care; and Desire and Helena are not much come
+forward, but it would be a dead blank and stop to them, so much
+lost, right out; and I feel as if it were a kind Providence for the
+dear girls that they should be just where they are. We are living
+quietly, inexpensively; it will cost no more to come home at one
+time than at another;" etc.
+
+There are persons to whom the pastime of life is the whole business
+of it; sickness and death and misfortune,--to say nothing of cares
+and duties--are the interruptions, to be got rid of as they may.
+
+The next week came more letters; they had got a new idea out there.
+Why should not Mrs. Ledwith and the others come and join them? They
+were in Munich, now; the schools were splendid; would be just the
+thing for Helena; and "it was time for mamma to have a rest."
+
+This thought, among the dozen others, had had its turn in Mrs.
+Ledwith's head. To break away, and leave everything, that is the
+impulse of natures like hers when things go hard and they cannot
+shape them. Only to get off; if she could do that!
+
+Meanwhile, it was far different with Desire.
+
+She was suffering with a deeper pain; not with a sharper loss, for
+she had seen so little of her father; but she looked in and back,
+and thought of what she _ought_ to miss, and what had never been.
+
+She ought to have known her father better; his life ought to have
+been more to her; was it her fault, or, harder yet, had it been his?
+This is the sorest thrust of grief; when it is only shock, and pity,
+and horror, and after these go by, not grief enough!
+
+The child wrestled with herself, as she always did, questioning,
+arraigning. If she could make it all right, in the past, and now; if
+she could feel that all she had to do was to be tenderly sorry, and
+to love on through the darkness, she would not mind the dark; it
+would be only a phase of the life,--the love. But to have lived her
+life so far, to have had the relations of it, and yet _not_ to have
+lived it, not to have been real child, real sister, not to be real
+stricken daughter now, tasting the suffering just as God made it to
+be tasted,--was she going through all things, even this, in a vain
+shadow? _Would_ not life touch her?
+
+She went away back, strangely, and asked whether she had had any
+business to be born? Whether it were a piece of God's truth at all,
+that she and all of them should be, and call themselves a
+household,--a home? The depth, the beauty of it were so unfulfilled!
+What was wrong, and how far back? Living in the midst of
+superficialities; in the noontide of a day of shams; putting her
+hands forth and grasping, almost everywhere, nothing but thin, hard
+surface,--she wondered how much of the world was real; how many came
+into the world where, and as, God meant them to come. What it was to
+"climb up some other way into the sheepfold," and to be a thief and
+a robber, even of life!
+
+These were strange thoughts. Desire Ledwith was a strange girl.
+
+But into the midst there crept one comfort; there was one glimpse
+out of the darkness into the daylight.
+
+Kenneth Kincaid came in often to see them,--to inquire; just now he
+had frequent business in the city; he brought ferns and flowers,
+that Dorris gathered and filled into baskets, fresh and damp with
+moss.
+
+Dorris was a dear friend; she dwelt in the life and the brightness;
+she reached forth and gathered, and turned and ministered again. The
+ferns and flowers were messages; leaves out of God's living Word,
+that she read, found precious, and sent on; apparitions, they
+seemed standing forth to sense, and making sweet, true signs from
+the inner realm of everlasting love and glory.
+
+And Kenneth,--Desire had never lost out of her heart those
+words,--"Be strong,--be patient, dear!"
+
+He did not speak to her of himself; he could not demand
+congratulation from her grief; he let it be until she should somehow
+learn, and of her own accord, speak to him.
+
+So everybody let her alone, poor child, to her hurt.
+
+The news of the engagement was no Boston news; it was something that
+had occurred, quietly enough, among a few people away up in Z----.
+Of the persons who came in,--the few remaining in town,--nobody
+happened to know or care. The Ripwinkleys did, of course; but Mrs.
+Ripwinkley remembered last winter, and things she had read in
+Desire's unconscious, undisguising face, and aware of nothing that
+could be deepening the mischief now, thinking only of the sufficient
+burden the poor child had to bear, thought kindly, "better not."
+
+Meanwhile Mrs. Ledwith was dwelling more and more upon the European
+plan. She made up her mind, at last, to ask Uncle Titus. When all
+was well, she would not seem to break a compact by going away
+altogether, so soon, to leave him; but now,--he would see the
+difference; perhaps advise it. She would like to know what he would
+advise. After all that had happened,--everything so changed,--half
+her family abroad,--what could she do? Would it not be more prudent
+to join them, than to set up a home again without them, and keep
+them out there? And all Helena's education to provide for, and
+everything so cheap and easy there, and so dear and difficult here?
+
+"Now, tell me, truly, uncle, should you object? Should you take it
+at all hard? I never meant to have left you, after all you have
+done; but you see I have to break up, now poor Grant is gone; we
+cannot live as we did before, even with what you do; and--for a
+little while--it is cheaper there; and by and by we can come back
+and make some other plan. Besides, I feel sometimes as if I _must_
+go off; as if there weren't anything left here for me."
+
+Poor woman! poor _girl_, still,--whose life had never truly taken
+root!
+
+"I suppose," said Uncle Titus, soberly, "that God shines all round.
+He's on this side as much as He is on that."
+
+Mrs. Ledwith looked up out of her handkerchief, with which at that
+moment she had covered her eyes.
+
+"I never knew Uncle Titus was pious!" she said to herself. And her
+astonishment dried her tears.
+
+He said nothing more that was pious, however; he simply assured her,
+then and in conversations afterward, that he should take nothing
+"hard;" he never expected to bind her, or put her on parole; he
+chose to come to know his relatives, and he had done so; he had also
+done what seemed to him right, in return for their meeting him half
+way; they were welcome to it all, to take it and use it as they best
+could, and as circumstances and their own judgment dictated. If they
+went abroad, he should advise them to do it before the winter.
+
+These words implied consent, approval. Mrs. Ledwith went up-stairs
+after them with a heart so much lightened that she was very nearly
+cheerful. There would be a good deal to do now, and something to
+look forward to; the old pulses of activity were quickened. She
+could live with those faculties that had been always vital in her,
+as people breathe with one live lung; but trouble and change had
+wrought in her no deeper or further capacity; had wakened nothing
+that had never been awake before.
+
+The house and furniture were to be sold; they would sail in
+September.
+
+When Desire perceived that it was settled, she gave way; she had
+said little before; her mother had had many plans, and they amused
+her; she would not worry her with opposition; and besides, she was
+herself in a secret dream of a hope half understood.
+
+It happened that she told it to Kenneth Kincaid herself; she saw
+almost every one who came, instead of her mother; Mrs. Ledwith lived
+in her own room chiefly. This was the way in which it had come
+about, that nobody noticed or guessed how it was with Desire, and
+what aspect Kenneth's friendship and kindness, in the simple history
+of those few weeks, might dangerously grow to bear with her.
+
+Except one person. Luclarion Grapp, at last, made up her mind.
+
+Kenneth heard what Desire told him, as he heard all she ever had to
+tell, with a gentle interest; comforted her when she said she could
+not bear to go, with the suggestion that it might not be for very
+long; and when she looked up in his face with a kind of strange,
+pained wonder, and repeated,--
+
+"But I cannot _bear_,--I tell you, I cannot _bear_ to go!" he
+answered,--
+
+"One can bear all that is right; and out of it the good will come
+that we do not know. All times go by. I am sorry--very sorry--that
+you must go; but there will be the coming back. We must all wait for
+that."
+
+She did not know what she looked for; she did not know what she
+expected him to mean; she expected nothing; the thought of his
+preventing it in any way never entered into her head; she knew, if
+she _had_ thought, how he himself was waiting, working. She only
+wanted him to _care_. Was this caring? Much? She could not tell.
+
+"We never can come _back_," she said, impetuously. "There will be
+all the time--everything--between."
+
+He almost spoke to her of it, then; he almost told her that the
+everything might be more, not less; that friendships gathered,
+multiplied; that there would be one home, he hoped, in which, by and
+by, she would often be; in which she would always be a dear and
+welcome comer.
+
+But she was so sad, so tried; his lips were held; in his pure,
+honest kindness, he never dreamt of any harm that his silence might
+do; it only seemed so selfish to tell her how bright it was with
+him.
+
+So he said, smiling,--
+
+"And who knows what the 'everything' may be?" And he took both her
+hands in his as he said good-by,--for his little stops were of
+minutes on his way, always,--and held them fast, and looked warmly,
+hopefully into her face.
+
+It was all for her,--to give her hope and courage; but the light of
+it was partly kindled by his own hope and gladness that lay behind;
+and how could she know that, or read it right? It was at once too
+much, and not enough, for her.
+
+Five minutes after, Luclarion Grapp went by the parlor door with a
+pile of freshly ironed linen in her arms, on her way up-stairs.
+
+Desire lay upon the sofa, her face down upon the pillow; her arms
+were thrown up, and her hands clasped upon the sofa-arm; her frame
+shook with sobs.
+
+Luclarion paused for the time of half a step; then she went on. She
+said to herself in a whisper, as she went,--
+
+"It is a stump; a proper hard one! But there's nobody else; and I
+have got to tell her!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening, under some pretense of clean towels, Luclarion came up
+into Desire's room.
+
+She was sitting alone, by the window, in the dark.
+
+Luclarion fussed round a little; wiped the marble slab and the
+basin; set things straight; came over and asked Desire if she should
+not put up the window-bars, and light the gas.
+
+"No," said Desire. "I like this best."
+
+So did Luclarion. She had only said it to make time.
+
+"Desire," she said,--she never put the "Miss" on, she had been too
+familiar all her life with those she was familiar with at all,--"the
+fact is I've got something to say, and I came up to say it."
+
+She drew near--came close,--and laid her great, honest, faithful
+hand on the back of Desire Ledwith's chair, put the other behind her
+own waist, and leaned over her.
+
+"You see, I'm a woman, Desire, and I know. You needn't mind me, I'm
+an old maid; that's the way I do know. Married folks, even mothers,
+half the time forget. But old maids never forget. I've had my
+stumps, and I can see that you've got yourn. But you'd ought to
+understand; and there's nobody, from one mistake and another, that's
+going to tell you. It's awful hard; it will be a trouble to you at
+first,"--and Luclarion's strong voice trembled tenderly with the
+sympathy that her old maid heart had in it, after, and because of,
+all those years,--"but Kenneth Kincaid"--
+
+"_What_!" cried Desire, starting to her feet, with a sudden
+indignation.
+
+"Is going to be married to Rosamond Holabird," said Luclarion, very
+gently. "There! you ought to know, and I have told you."
+
+"What makes you suppose that that would be a trouble to me?" blazed
+Desire. "How do you dare"--
+
+"I didn't dare; but I had to!" sobbed Luclarion, putting her arms
+right round her.
+
+And then Desire--as she would have done at any rate, for that blaze
+was the mere flash of her own shame and pain--broke down with a
+moan.
+
+"All at once! All at once!" she said piteously, and hid her face in
+Luclarion's bosom.
+
+And Luclarion folded her close; hugged her, the good woman, in her
+love that was sisterly and motherly and all, because it was the love
+of an old maid, who had endured, for a young maid upon whom the
+endurance was just laid,--and said, with the pity of heaven in the
+words,--
+
+"Yes. All at once. But the dear Lord stands by. Take hold of His
+hand,--and bear with all your might!"
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+INSIDE.
+
+
+"Do you think, Luclarion," said Desire, feebly, as Luclarion came to
+take away her bowl of chicken broth,--"that it is my _duty_ to go
+with mamma?"
+
+"I don't know," said Luclarion, standing with the little waiter in
+her right hand, her elbow poised upon her hip,--"I've thought of
+that, and I _don't_ know. There's most generally a stump, you see,
+one way or another, and that settles it, but here there's one both
+ways. I've kinder lost my road: come to two blazes, and can't tell
+which. Only, it ain't my road, after all. It lays between the Lord
+and you, and I suppose He means it shall. Don't you worry; there'll
+be some sort of a sign, inside or out. That's His business, you've
+just got to keep still, and get well."
+
+Desire had asked her mother, before this, if she would care very
+much,--no, she did not mean that,--if she would be disappointed, or
+disapprove, that she should stay behind.
+
+"Stay behind? Not go to Europe? Why, where _could_ you stay? What
+would you do?"
+
+"There would be things to do, and places to stay," Desire had
+answered, constrainedly. "I could do like Dorris."
+
+"Teach music!"
+
+"No. I don't know music. But I might teach something I do know. Or I
+could--rip," she said, with an odd smile, remembering something she
+had said one day so long ago; the day the news came up to Z----
+from Uncle Oldways. "And I might make out to put together for other
+people, and for a real business. I never cared to do it just for
+myself."
+
+"It is perfectly absurd," said Mrs Ledwith. "You couldn't be left to
+take care of yourself. And if you could, how it would look! No; of
+course you must go with us."
+
+"But do you _care_?"
+
+"Why, if there were any proper way, and if you really hate so to
+go,--but there isn't," said Mrs. Ledwith, not very grammatically or
+connectedly.
+
+"She _doesn't_ care," said Desire to herself, after her mother had
+left her, turning her face to the pillow, upon which two tears ran
+slowly down. "And that is my fault, too, I suppose. I have never
+been _anything_!"
+
+Lying there, she made up her mind to one thing. She would get Uncle
+Titus to come, and she would talk to him.
+
+"He won't encourage me in any notions," she said to herself. "And I
+mean now, if I can find it out, to do the thing God means; and then
+I suppose,--I _believe_,--the snarl will begin to unwind."
+
+Meanwhile, Luclarion, when she had set a nice little bowl of
+tea-muffins to rise, and had brought up a fresh pitcher of ice-water
+into Desire's room, put on her bonnet and went over to Aspen Street
+for an hour.
+
+Down in the kitchen, at Mrs. Ripwinkley's, they were having a nice
+time.
+
+Their girl had gone. Since Luclarion left, they had fallen into that
+Gulf-stream which nowadays runs through everybody's kitchen. Girls
+came, and saw, and conquered in their fashion; they muddled up, and
+went away.
+
+The nice times were in the intervals when they _had_ gone away.
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley did not complain; it was only her end of the
+"stump;" why should she expect to have a Luclarion Grapp to serve
+her all her life?
+
+This last girl had gone as soon as she found out that Sulie Praile
+was "no relation, and didn't anyways belong there, but had been took
+in." She "didn't go for to come to work in an _Insecution_. She had
+always been used to first-class private families."
+
+Girls will not stand any added numbers, voluntarily assumed, or even
+involuntarily befalling; they will assist in taking up no new
+responsibilities; to allow things to remain as they are, and cannot
+help being, is the depth of their condescension,--the extent of what
+they will put up with. There must be a family of some sort, of
+course, or there would not be a "place;" that is what the family is
+made for; but it must be established, no more to fluctuate; that is,
+you may go away, some of you, if you like, or you may die; but
+nobody must come home that has been away, and nobody must be born.
+As to anybody being "took in!" Why, the girl defined it; it was not
+being a family, but an _Insecution_.
+
+So the three--Diana, and Hazel, and Sulie--were down in the kitchen;
+Mrs. Ripwinkley was busy in the dining-room close by; there was a
+berry-cake to be mixed up for an early tea. Diana was picking over
+the berries, Hazel was chopping the butter into the flour, and Sulie
+on a low cushioned seat in a corner--there was one kept ready for
+her in every room in the house, and Hazel and Diana carried her
+about in an "arm-chair," made of their own clasped hands and wrists,
+wherever they all wanted to go,--Sulie was beating eggs.
+
+Sulie did that so patiently; you see she had no temptation to jump
+up and run off to anything else. The eggs turned, under her
+fingers, into thick, creamy, golden froth, fine to the last possible
+divisibility of the little air-bubbles.
+
+They could not do without Sulie now. They had had her for "all
+winter;" but in that winter she had grown into their home.
+
+"Why," said Hazel to her mother, when they had the few words about
+it that ended in there being no more words at all,--"that's the way
+children are _born_ into houses, isn't it? They just come; and
+they're new and strange at first, and seem so queer. And then after
+a while you can't think how the places were, and they not in them.
+Sulie belongs, mother!"
+
+So Sulie beat eggs, and darned stockings, and painted her lovely
+little flower-panels and racks and easels, and did everything that
+could be done, sitting still in her round chair, or in the cushioned
+corners made for her; and was always in the kitchen, above all, when
+any pretty little cookery was going forward.
+
+Vash ran in and out from the garden, and brought balsamine blossoms,
+from which she pulled the little fairy slippers, and tried to match
+them in pairs; and she picked off the "used-up and puckered-up"
+morning glories, which she blew into at the tube-end, and "snapped"
+on the back of her little brown hand.
+
+Wasn't that being good for anything, while berry-cake was making?
+The girls thought it was; as much as the balsamine blossoms were
+good for anything, or the brown butterflies with golden spots on
+their wings, that came and lived among them. The brown butterflies
+were a "piece of the garden;" little brown Vash was a piece of the
+house. Besides, she would eat some of the berry-cake when it was
+made; wasn't that worth while? She would have a "little teenty one"
+baked all for herself in a tin pepper-pot cover. Isn't that the
+special pleasantness of making cakes where little children are?
+
+Vash was always ready for an "Aaron," too; they could not do without
+her, any more than without Sulie. Pretty soon, when Diana should
+have left school, and Vash should be a little bigger, they meant to
+"coöperate," as the Holabirds had done at Westover.
+
+Of course, they knew a great deal about the Holabirds by this time.
+Hazel had stayed a week with Dorris at Miss Waite's; and one of
+Witch Hazel's weeks among "real folks" was like the days or hours in
+fairy land, that were years on the other side. She found out so much
+and grew so close to people.
+
+Hazel and Ruth Holabird were warm friends. And Hazel was to be
+Ruth's bridesmaid, by and by!
+
+For Ruth Holabird was going to be married to Dakie Thayne.
+
+"That seemed so funny," Hazel said. "Ruth didn't _look_ any older
+than she did; and Mr. Dakie Thayne was such a nice boy!"
+
+He was no less a man, either; he had graduated among the first three
+at West Point; he was looking earnestly for the next thing that he
+should do in life with his powers and responsibilities; he did not
+count his marrying a _separate_ thing; that had grown up alongside
+and with the rest; of course he could do nothing without Ruth; that
+was just what he had told her; and she,--well Ruth was always a
+sensible little thing, and it was just as plain to her as it was to
+him. Of course she must help him think and plan; and when the plans
+were made, it would take two to carry them out; why, yes, they must
+be married. What other way would there be?
+
+That wasn't what she _said_, but that was the quietly natural and
+happy way in which it grew to be a recognized thing in her mind,
+that pleasant summer after he came straight home to them with his
+honors and his lieutenant's commission in the Engineers; and his
+hearty, affectionate taking-for-granted; and it was no surprise or
+question with her, only a sure and very beautiful "rightness," when
+it came openly about.
+
+Dakie Thayne was a man; the beginning of a very noble one; but it is
+the noblest men that always keep a something of the boy. If you had
+not seen anything more of Dakie Thayne until he should be forty
+years old, you would then see something in him which would be
+precisely the same that it was at Outledge, seven years ago, with
+Leslie Goldthwaite, and among the Holabirds at Westover, in his
+first furlough from West Point.
+
+Luclarion came into the Ripwinkley kitchen just as the cakes--the
+little pepper-pot one and all--were going triumphantly into the
+oven, and Hazel was baring her little round arms to wash the dishes,
+while Diana tended the pans.
+
+Mrs. Ripwinkley heard her old friend's voice, and came out.
+
+"That girl ought to be here with you; or somewheres else than where
+she is, or is likely to be took," said Luclarion, as she looked
+round and sat down, and untied her bonnet-strings.
+
+Miss Grapp hated bonnet-strings; she never endured them a minute
+longer than she could help.
+
+"Desire?" asked Mrs. Ripwinkley, easily comprehending.
+
+"Yes; Desire. I tell you she has a hard row to hoe, and she wants
+comforting. She wants to know if it is her duty to go to Yourup with
+her mother. Now it may be her duty to be _willing_ to go; but it
+ain't anybody's else duty to let her. That's what came to me as I
+was coming along. I couldn't tell _her_ so, you see, because it
+would interfere with her part; and that's all in the tune as much as
+any; only we've got to chime in with our parts at the right stroke,
+the Lord being Leader. Ain't that about it, Mrs. Ripwinkley?"
+
+"If we are sure of the score, and can catch the sign," said Mrs.
+Ripwinkley, thoughtfully.
+
+"Well, I've sung mine; it's only one note; I may have to keep
+hammering on it; that's according to how many repeats there are to
+be. Mr. Oldways, he ought to know, for one. Amongst us, we have got
+to lay our heads together, and work it out. She's a kind of an odd
+chicken in that brood; and my belief is she's like the ugly duck
+Hazel used to read about. But she ought to have a chance; if she's a
+swan, she oughtn't to be trapesed off among the weeds and on the dry
+ground. 'Tisn't even ducks she's hatched with; they don't take to
+the same element."
+
+"I'll speak to Uncle Titus, and I will think," said Mrs. Ripwinkley.
+
+But before she did that, that same afternoon by the six o'clock
+penny post, a little note went to Mr. Oldways:--
+
+     "DEAR UNCLE TITUS,--
+
+     "I want to talk with you a little. If I were well, I should
+     come to see you in your study. Will you come up here, and see
+     me in my room?
+
+     "Yours sincerely,      DESIRE LEDWITH."
+
+Uncle Titus liked that. It counted upon something in him which few
+had the faith to count upon; which, truly he gave few people reason
+to expect to find.
+
+He put his hat directly on, took up his thick brown stick, and
+trudged off, up Borden Street to Shubarton Place.
+
+When Luclarion let him in, he told her with some careful emphasis,
+that he had come to see Desire.
+
+"Ask her if I shall come up," he said. "I'll wait down here."
+
+Helena was practicing in the drawing-room. Mrs. Ledwith lay, half
+asleep, upon a sofa. The doors into the hall were shut,--Luclarion
+had looked to that, lest the playing should disturb Desire.
+
+Luclarion was only gone three minutes. Then she came back, and led
+Mr. Oldways up three flights of stairs.
+
+"It's a long climb, clear from the door," she said.
+
+"I can climb," said Mr. Oldways, curtly.
+
+"I didn't expect it was going to stump _you_," said Luclarion, just
+as short in her turn. "But I thought I'd be polite enough to mention
+it."
+
+There came a queer little chuckling wheeze from somewhere, like a
+whispered imitation of the first few short pants of a steam-engine:
+that was Uncle Titus, laughing to himself.
+
+Luclarion looked down behind her, out of the corner of her eyes, as
+she turned the landing. Uncle Titus's head was dropped between his
+shoulders, and his shoulders were shaking up and down. But he kept
+his big stick clutched by the middle, in one hand, and the other
+just touched the rail as he went up. Uncle Titus was not out of
+breath. Not he. He could laugh and climb.
+
+Desire was sitting up for a little while, before going to bed again
+for the night. There was a low gas-light burning by the
+dressing-table, ready to turn up when the twilight should be gone;
+and a street lamp, just lighted, shone across into the room.
+Luclarion had been sitting with her, and her gray knitting-work lay
+upon the chair that she offered when she had picked it up, to Mr.
+Oldways. Then she went away and left them to their talk.
+
+"Mrs. Ripwinkley has been spry about it," she said to herself, going
+softly down the stairs. "But she always was spry."
+
+"You're getting well, I hope," said Uncle Titus, seating himself,
+after he had given Desire his hand.
+
+"I suppose so," said Desire, quietly. "That was why I wanted to see
+you. I want to know what I ought to do when I am well."
+
+"How can I tell?" asked Uncle Titus, bluntly.
+
+"Better than anybody I can ask. The rest are all too sympathizing. I
+am afraid they would tell me as I wish they should."
+
+"And I don't sympathize? Well, I don't think I do much. I haven't
+been used to it."
+
+"You have been used to think what was right; and I believe you would
+tell me truly. I want to know whether I ought to go to Europe with
+my mother."
+
+"Why not? Doesn't she want you to go?"--and Uncle Titus was sharp
+this time.
+
+"I suppose so; that is, I suppose she expects I will. But I don't
+know that I should be much except a hindrance to her. And I think I
+could stay and do something here, in some way. Uncle Titus, I hate
+the thought of going to Europe! Now, don't you suppose I ought to
+go?"
+
+"_Why_ do you hate the thought of going to Europe?" asked Uncle
+Titus, regarding her with keenness.
+
+"Because I have never done anything real in all my life!" broke
+forth Desire. "And this seems only plastering and patching what
+can't be patched. I want to take hold of something. I don't want to
+float round any more. What is there left of all we have ever tried
+to do, all these years? Of all my poor father's work, what is there
+to show for it now? It has all melted away as fast as it came, like
+snow on pavements; and now his life has melted away; and I feel as
+if we had never been anything real to each other! Uncle Titus, I
+can't tell you _how_ I feel!"
+
+Uncle Titus sat very still. His hat was in one hand, and both
+together held his cane, planted on the floor between his feet. Over
+hat and cane leaned his gray head, thoughtfully. If Desire could
+have seen his eyes, she would have found in them an expression that
+she had never supposed could be there at all.
+
+She had not so much spoken _to_ Uncle Titus, in these last words of
+hers, as she had irresistibly spoken _out_ that which was in her.
+She wanted Uncle Titus's good common sense and sense of right to
+help her decide; but the inward ache and doubt and want, out of
+which grew her indecisions,--these showed themselves forth at that
+moment simply because they must, with no expectation of a response
+from him. It might have been a stone wall that she cried against;
+she would have cried all the same.
+
+Then it was over, and she was half ashamed, thinking it was of no
+use, and he would not understand; perhaps that he would only set the
+whole down to nerves and fidgets and contrariness, and give her no
+common sense that she wanted, after all.
+
+But Uncle Titus spoke, slowly; much as if he, too, were speaking out
+involuntarily, without thought of his auditor. People do so speak,
+when the deep things are stirred; they speak into the deep that
+answereth unto itself,--the deep that reacheth through all souls,
+and all living, whether souls feel into it and know of it or not.
+
+"The real things are inside," he said. "The real world is the inside
+world. _God_ is not up, nor down, but in the _midst_."
+
+Then he looked up at Desire.
+
+"What is real of your life is living inside you now. That is
+something. Look at it and see what it is."
+
+"Discontent. Misery. Failure."
+
+"_Sense_ of failure. Well. Those are good things. The beginning of
+better. Those are _live_ things, at any rate."
+
+Desire had never thought of that.
+
+Now _she_ sat still awhile.
+
+Then she said,--"But we can't _be_ much, without doing it. I suppose
+we are put into a world of outsides for something."
+
+"Yes. To find out what it means. That's the inside of it. And to
+help make the outside agree with the in, so that it will be easier
+for other people to find out. That is the 'kingdom come and will be
+done, on earth as it is in heaven.' Heaven is the inside,--the truth
+of things."
+
+"Why, I never knew"--began Desire, astonished. She had almost
+finished aloud, as her mother had done in her own mind. She never
+knew that Uncle Oldways was "pious."
+
+"Never knew that was what it meant? What else can it mean? What do
+you suppose the resurrection was, or is?"
+
+Desire answered with a yet larger look of wonder, only in the dim
+light it could not be wholly seen.
+
+"The raising up of the dead; Christ coming up out of the tomb."
+
+"The coming out of the tomb was a small part of it; just what could
+not help being, if the rest was. Jesus Christ rose out of dead
+_things_, I take it, into these very real ones that we are talking
+of, and so lived in them. The resurrection is a man's soul coming
+alive to the soul of creation--God's soul. _That_ is eternal life,
+and what Jesus of Nazareth was born to show. Our coming to that is
+our being 'raised with Him;' and it begins, or ought to, a long way
+this side the tomb. If people would only read the New Testament,
+expecting to get as much common sense and earnest there as they do
+among the new lights and little 'progressive-thinkers' that are
+trying to find it all out over again, they might spare these
+gentlemen and themselves a great deal of their trouble."
+
+The exclamation rose half-way to her lips again,--"I never knew you
+thought like this. I never heard you talk of these things before!"
+
+But she held it back, because she would not stop him by reminding
+him that he _was_ talking. It was just the truth that was saying
+itself. She must let it say on, while it would.
+
+"Un--"
+
+She stopped there, at the first syllable. She would not even call
+him "Uncle Titus" again, for fear of recalling him to himself, and
+hushing him up.
+
+"There is something--isn't there--about those who _attain_ to that
+resurrection; those who are _worthy_? I suppose there must be some
+who are just born to this world, then, and never--'born again?'"
+
+"It looks like it, sometimes; who can tell?"
+
+"Uncle Oldways,"--it came out this time in her earnestness, and her
+strong personal appeal,--"do you think there are some people--whole
+families of people--who have no business in the reality of things
+to be at all? Who are all a mistake in the world, and have nothing
+to do with its meaning? I have got to feeling sometimes lately, as
+if--_I_--had never had any business to be."
+
+She spoke slowly--awe-fully. It was a strange speech for a girl in
+her nineteenth year. But she was a girl in this nineteenth century,
+also; and she had caught some of the thoughts and questions of it,
+and mixed them up with her own doubts and unsatisfactions which they
+could not answer.
+
+"The world is full of mistakes; mistakes centuries long; but it is
+full of salvation and setting to rights, also. 'The kingdom of
+heaven is like leaven, which a woman hid in three measures of meal
+till the whole was leavened.' You have been _allowed_ to be, Desire
+Ledwith. And so was the man that was born blind. And I think there
+is a colon put into the sentence about him, where a comma was meant
+to be."
+
+Desire did not ask him, then, what he meant; but she turned to the
+story after he had gone, and found this:--
+
+"Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works
+of God should be manifest in him."
+
+You can see, if you look also, where she took the colon out, and put
+the comma in.
+
+Were all the mistakes--the sins, even--for the very sake of the pure
+blessedness and the more perfect knowledge of the setting right?
+
+Desire began to think that Uncle Oldways' theology might help her.
+
+What she said to him now was,--
+
+"I want to do something. I should like to go and live with
+Luclarion, I think, down there in Neighbor Street. I should like to
+take hold of some other lives,--little children's, perhaps,"--and
+here Desire's voice softened,--"that don't seem to have any business
+to be, either, and see if I could help or straighten anything. Then
+I feel is if I should know."
+
+"Then--according to the Scripture--you _would_ know. But--that's
+undertaking a good deal. Luclarion Grapp has got there; but she has
+been fifty-odd years upon the road. And she has been doing real
+things all the time. That's what has brought her there. You can't
+boss the world's hard jobs till you've been a journeyman at the easy
+ones."
+
+"And I've missed my apprenticeship!" said Desire, with changed voice
+and face, falling back into her disheartenment again.
+
+"No!" Uncle Oldways almost shouted. "Not if you come to the Master
+who takes in the eleventh hour workers. And it isn't the eleventh
+hour with you,--_child_!"
+
+He dwelt on that word "child," reminding her of her short mistaking
+and of the long retrieval. Her nineteen years and the forever and
+ever contrasted themselves before her suddenly, in the light of
+hope.
+
+She turned sharply, though, to look at her duty. Her journeyman's
+duty of easy things.
+
+"Must I go to Europe with my mother?" she asked again, the
+conversation coming round to just that with which it had begun.
+
+"I'll talk with your mother," said Uncle Oldways, getting up and
+looking into his hat, as a man always does when he thinks of putting
+it on presently. "Good-night. I suppose you are tired enough now.
+I'll come again and see you."
+
+Desire stood up and gave him her hand.
+
+"I thank you, Uncle Titus, with all my heart."
+
+He did not answer her a word; but he knew she meant it.
+
+He did not stop that night to see his niece. He went home, to think
+it over. But as he walked down Borden Street, swinging his big
+stick, he said to himself,--
+
+"Next of kin! Old Marmaduke Wharne was right. But it takes more than
+the Family Bible to tell you which it is!"
+
+Two days after, he had a talk with Mrs. Ledwith which relieved both
+their minds.
+
+From the brown-and-apricot drawing-room,--from among the things
+that stood for nothing now, and had never stood for home,--he went
+straight up, without asking, and knocked at Desire's third-story
+door.
+
+"Come in!" she said, without a note of expectation in her voice.
+
+She had had a dull morning. Helena had brought her a novel from
+Loring's that she could not read. Novels, any more than life, cannot
+be read with very much patience, unless they touch something besides
+surface. Why do critics--some of them--make such short, smart
+work,--such cheerful, confident despatch, nowadays, of a story with
+religion in it, as if it were an abnormity,--a thing with sentence
+of death in itself, like a calf born with two heads,--that needs not
+their trouble, save to name it as it is? Why, that is, if religion
+stand for the relation of things to spirit, which I suppose it
+should? Somebody said that somebody had written a book made up of
+"spiritual struggles and strawberry short-cake." That was bright and
+funny; and it seemed to settle the matter; but, taking strawberry
+short-cake representatively, what else is human experience on earth
+made up of? And are novels to be pictures of human experience, or
+not?
+
+This has nothing to do with present matters, however, except that
+Desire found nothing real in her novel, and so had flung it aside,
+and was sitting rather listlessly with her crochet which she never
+cared much for, when Uncle Oldways entered.
+
+Her face brightened instantly as he came in. He sat down just where
+he had sat the other night. Mr. Oldways had a fashion of finding the
+same seat a second time when he had come in once; he was a man who
+took up most things where he left them off, and this was an
+unconscious sign of it.
+
+"Your mother has decided to sell the house on the 23d, it seems," he
+said.
+
+"Yes; I have been out twice. I shall be able to go away by then; I
+suppose that is all she has waited for."
+
+"Do you think you could be contented to come and live with me?"
+
+"Come and _live_?"
+
+"Yes. And let your mother and Helena go to Europe."
+
+"O, Uncle Oldways! I think I could _rest_ there! But I don't want
+only to rest, you know. I must do something. For myself, to begin
+with. I have made up my mind not to depend upon my mother. Why
+should I, any more than a boy? And I am sure I cannot depend on
+anybody else."
+
+These were Desire Ledwith's thanks; and Mr. Oldways liked them. She
+did not say it to please him; she thought it seemed almost
+ungrateful and unwilling; but she was so intent on taking up life
+for herself.
+
+"You must have a place to do in,--or from," said Mr. Oldways. "And
+it is better you should be under some protection. You must consent
+to that for your mother's sake. How much money have you got?"
+
+"Two hundred and fifty dollars a year. Of my own."
+
+This was coming to business and calculation and common sense. Desire
+was encouraged. Uncle Oldways did not think her quite absurd.
+
+"That will clothe you,--without much fuss and feathers?"
+
+"I have done with fuss and feathers,"--Desire said with a grave
+smile, glancing at her plain white wrapper and the black shawl that
+was folded around her.
+
+"Then come where is room for you and a welcome, and do as much more
+as you please, and can, for yourself, or for anybody else. I won't
+give you a cent; you shall have something to do for me, if you
+choose. I am an old man now, and want help. Perhaps what I want as
+much as anything is what I've been all my life till lately, pretty
+obstinate in doing without."
+
+Uncle Oldways spoke short, and drew his breath in and puffed it out
+between his sentences, in his bluff way; but his eyes were kind, as
+he sat looking at the young girl over his hat and cane.
+
+She thought of the still, gray parlor; of Rachel Froke and her face
+of peace; and the Quaker meeting and the crumbs last year; of Uncle
+Oldways' study, and his shelves rich with books; of the new
+understanding that had begun between herself and him, and the faith
+she had found out, down beneath his hard reserves; of the beautiful
+neighborhood, Miss Craydocke's Beehive, Aunt Franks' cheery home and
+the ways of it, and Hazel's runnings in and out. It seemed as if the
+real things had opened for her, and a place been made among them in
+which she should have "business to be," and from which her life
+might make a new setting forth.
+
+"And mamma knows?" she said, inquiringly, after that long pause.
+
+"Yes. I told you I would talk with her. That is what we came to. It
+is only for you to say, now."
+
+"I will come. I shall be glad to come!" And her face was full of
+light as she looked up and said it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Desire never thought for a moment of what her mother could not help
+thinking of; of what Mrs. Megilp thought and said, instantly, when
+she learned it three weeks later.
+
+It is wonderful how abiding influence is,--even influence to which
+we are secretly superior,--if ever we have been subjected to, or
+allowed ourselves to be swayed by it. The veriest tyranny of
+discipline grows into one's conscience, until years after, when life
+has got beyond the tyranny, conscience,--or something superinduced
+upon it,--keeps up the echo of the old mandates, and one can take no
+comfort in doing what one knows all the time one has a perfect
+right, besides sound reason, to do. It was a great while before our
+grandmothers' daughters could peaceably stitch and overcast a seam,
+instead of over-sewing and felling it. I know women who feel to this
+moment as if to sit down and read a book of a week-day, in the
+daytime, were playing truant to the needle, though all the
+sewing-machines on the one hand, and all the demand and supply of
+mental culture on the other, of this present changed and bettered
+time, protest together against the absurdity.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith had heard the Megilp precepts and the Megilp
+forth-putting of things, until involuntarily everything showed
+itself to her in a Megilp light. The Megilp "sense of duty,"
+therefore, came up as she unhesitatingly assented to Uncle Oldways'
+proposal and request. He wanted Desire; of course she could not say
+a word; she owed him something, which she was glad she could so make
+up; and secretly there whispered in her mind the suggestion which
+Mrs. Megilp, on the other side of the water, spoke right out.
+
+"If he wants her, he must mean something by her. He is an old man;
+he might not live to give her back into her mother's keeping; what
+would she do there, in that old house of his, if he should die,
+unless--he _does_ mean something? He has taken a fancy to her; she
+is odd, as he is; and he isn't so queer after all, but that his
+crotchets have a good, straightforward sense of justice in them.
+Uncle Titus knows what he is about; and what's more, just what he
+ought to be about. It is a good thing to have Desire provided for;
+she is uncomfortable and full of notions, and she isn't likely ever
+to be married."
+
+So Desire was given up, easily, she could not help feeling; but she
+knew she had been a puzzle and a vexation to her mother, and that
+Mrs. Ledwith had never had the least idea what to do with her; least
+of all had she now, what she should do with her abroad.
+
+"It was so much better for her that Uncle Titus had taken her home."
+With these last words Mrs. Ledwith reassured herself and cheered her
+child.
+
+Perhaps it would have been the same--it came into Desire's head,
+that would conceive strange things--if the angels had taken her.
+
+Mrs. Ledwith went to New York; she stayed a few days with Mrs.
+Macmichael, who wanted her to buy lace for her in Brussels and
+Bohemian glass in Prague; then a few days more with her cousin,
+Geraldine Raxley; and then the _City of Antwerp_ sailed.
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+NEIGHBORS AND NEXT OF KIN.
+
+
+"I'll tell you what to do with them, Luclarion," said Hazel briskly.
+"Teach them to play."
+
+"Music! Pianners!" exclaimed Luclarion, dismayed.
+
+"No. Games. Teach them to have good times. That was the first thing
+ever we learnt, wasn't it, Dine? And we never could have got along
+without it."
+
+"It takes _you_!" said Luclarion, looking at Hazel with delighted
+admiration.
+
+"Does it? Well I don't know but it does. May I go, mother?
+Luclarion, haven't you got a great big empty room up at the top of
+the house?"
+
+Luclarion had.
+
+"That's just what it's for, then. Couldn't Mr. Gallilee put up a
+swing? And a 'flying circle' in the middle? You see they can't go
+out on the roofs; so they must have something else that will seem
+kind of flighty. And _I'll_ tell you how they'll learn their
+letters. Sulie and I will paint 'em; great big ones, all colors; and
+hang 'em up with ribbons, and every child that learns one, so as to
+know it everywhere, shall take it down and carry it home. Then we
+will have marbles for numbers; and they shall play addition games,
+and multiplication games, and get the sums for prizes; the ones that
+get to the head, you know. Why, you don't understand _objects_,
+Luclarion!"
+
+Luclarion had been telling them of the wild little folk of Neighbor
+Street, and worse, of Arctic Street. She wanted to do something with
+them. She had tried to get them in with gingerbread and popcorn;
+they came in fast enough for those; but they would not stay. They
+were digging in the gutters and calling names; learning the foul
+language of the places into which they were born; chasing and hiding
+in alley-ways; filching, if they could, from shops; going off
+begging with lies on their lips. It was terrible to see the springs
+from which the life of the city depths was fed.
+
+"If you could stop it _there_!" Luclarion said, and said with
+reason.
+
+"Will you let me go?" asked Hazel of her mother, in good earnest.
+
+"'Twon't hurt her," put in Luclarion. "Nothing's catching that you
+haven't got the seeds of in your own constitution. And so the
+catching will be the other way."
+
+The seeds of good,--to catch good; that was what Luclarion Grapp
+believed in, in those dirty little souls,--no, those clean little
+_souls_, overlaid with all outward mire and filth of body, clothing,
+speech, and atmosphere, for a mile about; through which they could
+no more grope and penetrate, to reach their own that was hidden from
+them in the clearer life beyond, than we can grope and reach to
+other stars.
+
+"I will get Desire," quoth Hazel, inspired as she always was, both
+ways.
+
+Running in at the house in Greenley Street the next Thursday, she
+ran against Uncle Titus coming out.
+
+"What now?" he demanded.
+
+"Desire," said Hazel. "I've come for her. We're wanted at
+Luclarion's. We've got work to do."
+
+"Humph! Work? What kind?"
+
+"Play," said Hazel, laughing. She delighted to bother and mystify
+Uncle Titus, and imagined that she did.
+
+"I thought so. Tea parties?"
+
+"Something like," said Hazel. "There are children down there that
+don't know how to grow up. They haven't any comfortable sort of
+fashion of growing up. Somebody has got to teach them. They don't
+know how to play 'Grand Mufti,' and they never heard of 'King George
+and his troops.' Luclarion tried to make them sit still and learn
+letters; but of course they wouldn't a minute longer than the
+gingerbread lasted, and they are eating her out of house and home.
+It will take young folks, and week-days, you see; so Desire and I
+are going." And Hazel ran up the great, flat-stepped staircase.
+
+"Lives that have no business to be," said Uncle Titus to himself,
+going down the brick walk. "The Lord has His own ways of bringing
+lives together. And His own business gets worked out among them,
+beyond their guessing. When a man grows old, he can stand still now
+and then, and see a little."
+
+It was a short cross street that Luclarion lived in, between two
+great thoroughfares crowded with life and business, bustle,
+drudgery, idleness, and vice. You will not find the name I give
+it,--although you may find one that will remind you of it,--in any
+directory or on any city map. But you can find the places without
+the names; and if you go down there with the like errands in your
+heart, you will find the work, as she found it, to do.
+
+She heard the noise of street brawls at night, voices of men and
+women quarreling in alley-ways, and up in wretched garrets; flinging
+up at each other, in horrible words, all the evil they knew of in
+each other's lives,--"away back," Luclarion said, "to when they were
+little children."
+
+"And what is it," she would say to Mrs. Ripwinkley telling her
+about it, "that _flings_ it up, and can call it a shame, after all
+the shames of years and years? Except just _that_ that the little
+children _were_, underneath, when the Lord let them--He knows
+why--be born so? I tell you, ma'am, it's a mystery; and the nigher
+you come to it, the more it is; it's a piece of hell and a piece of
+heaven; it's the wrastle of the angel and the dragon; and it's going
+on at one end, while they're building up their palaces and living
+soft and sweet and clean at the other, with everything hushed up
+that can't at least _seem_ right and nice and proper. I know there's
+good folks there, in the palaces; _beautiful_ folks; there, and all
+the way down between; with God's love in them, and His hate, that is
+holy, against sin; and His pity, that is _prayers_ in them, for all
+people and places that are dark; but if they would _come down_
+there, and take hold! I think it's them that would, that might have
+part in the first resurrection, and live and reign the thousand
+years."
+
+Luclarion never counted herself among them,--those who were to have
+thrones and judgments; she forgot, even, that she had gone down and
+taken hold; her words came burning-true, out of her soul; and in the
+heat of truth they were eloquent.
+
+But I meant to tell you of her living.
+
+In the daytime it was quiet; the gross evils crept away and hid from
+the sunshine; there was labor to take up the hours, for those who
+did labor; and you might not know or guess, to go down those
+avenues, that anything worse gathered there than the dust of the
+world's traffic that the lumbering drays ground up continually with
+their wheels, and the wind,--that came into the city from far away
+country places of green sweetness, and over hills and ponds and
+streams and woods,--flung into the little children's faces.
+
+Luclarion had taken a house,--one of two, that fronted upon a
+little planked court; aside, somewhat, from Neighbor Street, as that
+was a slight remove from the absolute terrible contact of Arctic
+Street. But it was in the heart of that miserable quarter; she could
+reach out her hands and touch and gather in, if it would let her,
+the wretchedness. She had chosen a place where it was possible for
+her to make a nook of refuge, not for herself only, or so much, as
+for those to whom she would fain be neighbor, and help to a better
+living.
+
+It had been once a dwelling of some well-to-do family of the days
+gone by; of some merchant, whose ventures went out and came in at
+those wharves below, whence the air swept up pure, then, with its
+salt smell, into the streets. The rooms were fairly large; Luclarion
+spent money out of her own little property, that had been growing by
+care and saving till she could spare from it, in doing her share
+toward having it all made as sweet and clean as mortar and whitewash
+and new pine-boards and paint and paper could make it. All that was
+left of the old, they scoured with carbolic soap; and she had the
+windows opened, and in the chimneys that had been swept of their
+soot she had clear fires made and kept burning for days.
+
+Then she put her new, plain furnishings into her own two down-stairs
+rooms; and the Gallilees brought in theirs above; and beside them,
+she found two decent families,--a German paper-hanger's, and that of
+a carpenter at one of the theatres, whose wife worked at
+dressmaking,--to take the rest. Away up, at the very top, she had
+the wide, large room that Hazel spoke of, and a smaller one to which
+she climbed to sleep, for the sake of air as near heaven as it could
+be got.
+
+One of her lower-rooms was her living and housekeeping room; the
+other she turned into a little shop, in which she sold tapes and
+needles and cheap calicoes and a few ribbons; and kept a counter on
+the opposite side for bread and yeast, gingerbread, candy, and the
+like. She did this partly because she must do something to help out
+the money for her living and her plans, and partly to draw the women
+and children in. How else could she establish any relations between
+herself and them, or get any permanent hold or access? She had
+"turned it all over in her mind," she said; "and a tidy little shop
+with fair, easy prices, was the very thing, and a part of just what
+she came down there to do."
+
+She made real, honest, hop-raised bread, of sweet flour that she
+gave ten dollars a barrel for; it took a little more than a pint,
+perhaps, to make a tea loaf; that cost her three cents; she sold her
+loaf for four, and it was better than they could get anywhere else
+for five. Then, three evenings in a week, she had hot muffins, or
+crumpets, home-made; (it was the subtle home touch and flavor that
+she counted on, to carry more than a good taste into their mouths,
+even a dim notion of home sweetness and comfort into their hearts;)
+these first,--a quart of flour at five cents, two eggs at a cent
+apiece, and a bit of butter, say three cents more, with three cents
+worth of milk, made an outlay of fifteen cents for a dozen and a
+half; so she sold them for ten cents a dozen, and the like had never
+been tasted or dreamed of in all that region round about; no, nor I
+dare almost to say, in half the region round about Republic Avenue
+either, where they cannot get Luclarion Grapps to cook.
+
+The crumpets were cheaper; they were only bread-sponge, baked on a
+griddle; they were large, and light and tender; a quart of flour
+would make ten; she gave the ten for seven cents.
+
+And do you see, putting two cents on every quart of her flour, for
+her labor, she _earned_, not _made_,--that word is for speculators
+and brokers,--with a barrel of one hundred and ninety six pounds or
+quarts, three dollars and ninety-two cents? The beauty of it was,
+you perceive, that she did a small business; there was an eager
+market for all she could produce, and there was no waste to allow a
+margin for.
+
+I am not a bit of a political economist myself; but I have a shrewd
+suspicion that Luclarion Grapp was, besides having hit upon the
+initial, individual idea of a capital social and philanthropic
+enterprise.
+
+This was all she tried to do at first; she began with bread; the
+Lord from heaven began with that; she fed as much of the multitude
+as she could reach; they gathered about her for the loaves; and they
+got, consciously or unconsciously, more than they came or asked for.
+
+They saw her clean-swept floor; her netted windows that kept the
+flies out, the clean, coarse white cotton shades,--tacked up, and
+rolled and tied with cord, country-fashion, for Luclarion would not
+set any fashions that her poor neighbors might not follow if they
+would;--and her shelves kept always dusted down; they could see her
+way of doing that, as they happened in at different times, when she
+whisked about, lightly and nicely, behind and between her jars and
+boxes and parcels with the little feather duster that she kept
+hanging over her table where she made her change and sat at her
+sewing.
+
+They grew ashamed by degrees,--those coarse women,--to come in in
+their frowsy rags, to buy her delicate muffins or her white loaves;
+they would fling on the cleanest shawl they had or could borrow, to
+"cut round to Old Maid Grapp's," after a cent's worth of yeast,--for
+her yeast, also, was like none other that could be got, and would
+_almost_ make her own beautiful bread of itself.
+
+Back of the shop was her house-room; the cheapest and cleanest of
+carpet,--a square, bound round with bright-striped carpet-binding,--laid
+in the middle of a clean dark yellow floor; a plain pine table, scoured
+white, standing in the middle of that; on it, at tea-time, common blue
+and white crockery cups and plates, and a little black teapot; a napkin,
+coarse, but fresh from the fold, laid down to save, and at the same
+time to set off, with a touch of delicate neatness, the white table;
+a wooden settee, with a home-made calico-covered cushion and pillows,
+set at right angles with the large, black, speckless stove; a wooden
+rocking-chair, made comfortable in like manner, on the other side; the
+sink in the corner, clean, freshly rinsed, with the bright tin basin
+hung above it on a nail.
+
+There was nothing in the whole place that must not be, in some
+shape, in almost the poorest; but all so beautifully ordered, so
+stainlessly kept. Through that open door, those women read a daily
+sermon.
+
+And Luclarion herself,--in a dark cotton print gown, a plain strip
+of white about the throat,--even that was cotton, not linen, and two
+of them could be run together in ten minutes for a cent,--and a
+black alpacca apron, never soiled or crumpled, but washed and ironed
+when it needed, like anything else,--her hair smoothly gathered back
+under a small white half-handkerchief cap, plain-hemmed,--was the
+sermon alive; with the soul of it, the inner sweetness and purity,
+looking out at them from clear pleasant eyes, and lips cheery with a
+smile that lay behind them.
+
+She had come down there just to do as God told her to be a neighbor,
+and to let her light shine. He would see about the glorifying.
+
+She did not try to make money out of her candy, or her ginger-nuts;
+she kept those to entice the little children in; to tempt them to
+come again when they had once done an errand, shyly, or saucily, or
+hang-doggedly,--it made little difference which to her,--in her
+shop.
+
+"I'll tell you what it's like," Hazel said, when she came in and
+up-stairs the first Saturday afternoon with Desire, and showed and
+explained to her proudly all Luclarion's ways and blessed
+inventions. "It's like your mother and mine throwing crumbs to make
+the pigeons come, when they were little girls, and lived in
+Boston,--I mean _here_!"
+
+Hazel waked up at the end of her sentence, suddenly, as we all do
+sometimes, out of talking or thinking, to the consciousness that it
+was _here_ that she had mentally got round to.
+
+Desire had never heard of the crumbs or the pigeons. Mrs. Ledwith
+had always been in such a hurry, living on, that she never stopped
+to tell her children the sweet old tales of how she _had_ lived. Her
+child-life had not ripened in her as it had done in Frank.
+
+Desire and Hazel went up-stairs and looked at the empty room. It was
+light and pleasant; dormer windows opened out on a great area of
+roofs, above which was blue sky; upon which, poor clothes fluttered
+in the wind, or cats walked and stretched themselves safely and
+lazily in the sun.
+
+"I always _do_ like roofs!" said Hazel. "The nicest thing in 'Mutual
+Friend' is Jenny Wren up on the Jew's roof, being dead. It seems
+like getting up over the world, and leaving it all covered up and
+put away."
+
+"Except the old clothes," said Desire.
+
+"They're _washed_" answered Hazel, promptly; and never stopped to
+think of the meaning.
+
+Then she jumped down from the window, along under which a great
+beam made a bench to stand on, and looked about the chamber.
+
+"A swing to begin with," she said. "Why what is that? Luclarion's
+got one!"
+
+Knotted up under two great staples that held it, was the long loop
+of clean new rope; the notched board rested against the chimney
+below.
+
+"It's all ready! Let's go down and catch one! Luclarion, we've come
+to tea," she announced, as they reached the sitting-room. "There's
+the shop bell!"
+
+In the shop was a woman with touzled hair and a gown with placket
+split from gathers to hem, showing the ribs of a dirty skeleton
+skirt. A child with one garment on,--some sort of woolen thing that
+had never been a clean color, and was all gutter-color now,--the
+woman holding the child by the hand here, in a safe place, in a way
+these mothers have who turn their children out in the street dirt
+and scramble without any hand to hold. No wonder, though, perhaps;
+in the strangeness and unfitness of the safe, pure place, doubtless
+they feel an uneasy instinct that the poor little vagabonds have got
+astray, and need some holding.
+
+"Give us a four-cent loaf!" said the woman, roughly, her eyes
+lowering under crossly furrowed brows, as she flung two coins upon
+the little counter.
+
+Luclarion took down one, looked at it, saw that it had a pale side,
+and exchanged it for another.
+
+"Here is a nice crusty one," she said pleasantly, turning to wrap it
+in a sheet of paper.
+
+"None o' yer gammon! Give it here; there's your money; come along,
+Crazybug!" And she grabbed the loaf without a wrapper, and twitched
+the child.
+
+Hazel sat still. She knew there was no use. But Desire with her
+point-black determination, went right at the boy, took hold of his
+hand, dirt and all; it was disagreeable, therefore she thought she
+must do it.
+
+"Don't you want to come and swing?" she said.
+
+"---- yer swing! and yer imperdence! Clear out! He's got swings
+enough to home! Go to ----, and be ----, you ---- ---- ----!"
+
+Out of the mother's mouth poured a volley of horrible words, like a
+hailstorm of hell.
+
+Desire fell back, as from a blinding shock of she knew not what.
+
+Luclarion came round the counter, quite calmly.
+
+"Ma'am," she said, "those words won't hurt _her_. She don't know the
+language. But you've got God's daily bread in your hand; how can you
+talk devil's Dutch over it?"
+
+The woman glared at her. But she saw nothing but strong, calm,
+earnest asking in the face; the asking of God's own pity.
+
+She rebelled against that, sullenly; but she spoke no more foul
+words. I think she could as soon have spoken them in the face of
+Christ; for it was the Christ in Luclarion Grapp that looked out at
+her.
+
+"You needn't preach. You can order me out of your shop, if you like.
+I don't care."
+
+"I don't order you out. I'd rather you would come again. I don't
+think you will bring that street-muck with you, though."
+
+There was both confidence and command in the word like the "Neither
+do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." It detached the street-muck
+from the woman. It was not _she_; it was defilement she had picked
+up, when perhaps she could not help it. She could scrape her shoes
+at the door, and come in clean.
+
+"You know a darned lot about it, I suppose!" were the last words of
+defiance; softened down, however, you perceive, to that which can be
+printed.
+
+Desire was pale, with a dry sob in her throat, when the woman had
+gone and Luclarion turned round.
+
+"The angels in heaven know; why shouldn't you?" said Luclarion.
+"That's what we've got to help."
+
+A child came in afterwards, alone; with an actual clean spot in the
+middle of her face, where a ginger-nut or an acid drop might go in.
+This was a regular customer of a week past. The week had made that
+clean spot; with a few pleasant and encouraging hints from
+Luclarion, administered along with the gingerbread.
+
+Now it was Hazel's turn.
+
+The round mouth and eyes, with expectation in them, were like a spot
+of green to Hazel, feeling with her witch-wand for a human spring.
+But she spoke to Desire, looking cunningly at the child.
+
+"Let us go back and swing," she said.
+
+The girl's head pricked itself up quickly.
+
+"We've got a swing up-stairs," said Hazel, passing close by, and
+just pausing. "A new one. I guess it goes pretty high; and it looks
+out of top windows. Wouldn't you like to come and see?"
+
+The child lived down in a cellar.
+
+"Take up some ginger-nuts, and eat them there," said Luclarion to
+Hazel.
+
+If it had not been for that, the girl would have hung back, afraid
+of losing her shop treat.
+
+Hazel knew better than to hold out her hand, at this first essay;
+she would do that fast enough when the time came. She only walked
+on, through the sitting-room, to the stairs.
+
+The girl peeped, and followed.
+
+Clean stairs. She had never trodden such before. Everything was
+strange and clean here, as she had never seen anything before in all
+her life, except the sky and the white clouds overhead. Heaven be
+thanked that they are held over us, spotless, always!
+
+Hazel heard the little feet, shuffling, in horrible, distorted
+shoes, after her, over the steps; pausing, coming slowly but still
+starting again, and coming on.
+
+Up on the high landing, under the skylight, she opened the door wide
+into the dormer-windowed room, and went in; she and Desire, neither
+of them looking round.
+
+Hazel got into the swing. Desire pushed; after three vibrations they
+saw the ragged figure standing in the doorway, watching, turning its
+head from side to side as the swing passed.
+
+"Almost!" cried Hazel, with her feet up at the window. "There!" She
+thrust them out at that next swing; they looked as if they touched
+the blue.
+
+"I can see over all the chimneys, and away off, down the water! Now
+let the old cat die."
+
+Out again, with a spring, as the swinging slackened, she still took
+no notice of the child, who would have run, like a wild kitten, if
+she had gone after her. She called Desire, and plunged into a closet
+under the eaves.
+
+"I wonder what's here!" she exclaimed.
+
+"Rats!"
+
+The girl in the doorway saw the dark, into which the low door
+opened; she was used to rats in the dark.
+
+"I don't believe it," says Hazel; "Luclarion has a cut, a great big
+buff one with green eyes. She came in over the roofs, and she runs
+up here nights. I shouldn't wonder if there might be kittens,
+though,--one of these days, at any rate. Why! what a place to play
+'Dare' in! It goes way round, I don't know where! Look here,
+Desire!"
+
+She sat on the threshold, that went up a step, over the beam, and so
+leaned in. She had one eye toward the girl all the time, out of the
+shadow. She beckoned and nodded, and Desire came.
+
+At the same moment, the coast being clear, the girl gave a sudden
+scud across, and into the swing. She began to scuff with her
+slipshod, twisted shoes, pushing herself.
+
+Hazel gave another nod behind her to Desire. Desire stood up, and as
+the swing came back, pushed gently, touching the board only.
+
+The girl laughed out with the sudden thrill of the motion. Desire
+pushed again.
+
+Higher and higher, till the feet reached up to the window.
+
+"There!" she cried; and kicked an old shoe off, out over the roof.
+"I've lost my shoe!"
+
+"Never mind; it'll be down in the yard," said Hazel.
+
+Thereupon the child, at the height of her sweep again, kicked out
+the other one.
+
+Desire and Hazel, together, pushed her for a quarter of an hour.
+
+"Now let's have ginger-cakes," said Hazel, taking them out of her
+pocket, and leaving the "cat" to die.
+
+Little Barefoot came down at that, with a run; hanging to the rope
+at one side, and dragging, till she tumbled in a sprawl upon the
+floor.
+
+"You ought to have waited," said Desire.
+
+"Poh! I don't never wait!" cried the ragamuffin rubbing her elbows.
+"I don't care."
+
+"But it isn't nice to tumble round," suggested Hazel.
+
+"I _ain't_ nice," answered the child, and settled the subject.
+
+"Well, these ginger-nuts are," said Hazel. "Here!"
+
+"Have you had a good time?" she asked when the last one was eaten,
+and she led the way to go down-stairs.
+
+"Good time! That ain't nothin'! I've had a reg'lar bust! I'm comin'
+agin'; it's bully. Now I must get my loaf and my shoes, and go along
+back and take a lickin'."
+
+That was the way Hazel caught her first child.
+
+She made her tell her name,--Ann Fazackerley,--and promise to come
+on Saturday afternoon, and bring two more girls with her.
+
+"We'll have a party," said Hazel, "and play Puss in the Corner. But
+you must get leave," she added. "Ask your mother. I don't want you
+to be punished when you go home."
+
+"Lor! you're green! I ain't got no mother. An' I always hooks jack.
+I'm licked reg'lar when I gets back, anyway. There's half a dozen of
+'em. When 'tain't one, it's another. That's Jane Goffey's bread;
+she's been a swearin' after it this hour, you bet. But I'll
+come,--see if I don't!"
+
+Hazel drew a hard breath as she let the girl go. Back to her crowded
+cellar, her Jane Goffeys, the swearings, and the lickings. What was
+one hour at a time, once or twice a week, to do against all this?
+
+But she remembered the clean little round in her face, out of which
+eyes and mouth looked merrily, while she talked rough slang; the
+same fun and daring,--nothing worse,--were in this child's face,
+that might be in another's saying prettier words. How could she help
+her words, hearing nothing but devil's Dutch around her all the
+time? Children do not make the language they are born into. And the
+face that could be simply merry, telling such a tale as that,--what
+sort of bright little immortality must it be the outlook of?
+
+Hazel meant to try her hour.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+This is one of my last chapters. I can only tell you now they
+began,--these real folks,--the work their real living led them up
+to. Perhaps some other time we may follow it on. If I were to tell
+you now a finished story of it, I should tell a story ahead of the
+world.
+
+I can show you what six weeks brought it to. I can show you them
+fairly launched in what may grow to a beautiful private charity,--an
+"Insecution,"--a broad social scheme,--a millennium; at any rate, a
+life work, change and branch as it may, for these girls who have
+found out, in their girlhood, that there is genuine living, not mere
+"playing pretend," to be done in the world. But you cannot, in
+little books of three hundred pages, see things through. I never
+expected or promised to do that. The threescore years and ten
+themselves, do not do it.
+
+It turned into regular Wednesday and Saturday afternoons. Three
+girls at first, then six, then less again,--sometimes only one or
+two; until they gradually came up to and settled at, an average of
+nine or ten.
+
+The first Saturday they took them as they were. The next time they
+gave them a stick of candy each, the first thing, then Hazel's
+fingers were sticky, and she proposed the wash-basin all round,
+before they went up-stairs. The bright tin bowl was ready in the
+sink, and a clean round towel hung beside; and with some red and
+white soap-balls, they managed to fascinate their dirty little
+visitors into three clean pairs of hands, and three clean faces as
+well.
+
+The candy and the washing grew to be a custom; and in three weeks'
+time, watching for a hot day and having it luckily on a Saturday,
+they ventured upon instituting a whole bath, in big round tubs, in
+the back shed-room, where a faucet came in over a wash bench, and a
+great boiler was set close by.
+
+They began with a foot-paddle, playing pond, and sailing chips at
+the same time; then Luclarion told them they might have tubs full,
+and get in all over and duck, if they liked; and children who may
+hate to be washed, nevertheless are always ready for a duck and a
+paddle. So Luclarion superintended the bath-room; Diana helped her;
+and Desire and Hazel tended the shop. Luclarion invented a
+shower-bath with a dipper and a colander; then the wet, tangled hair
+had to be combed,--a climax which she had secretly aimed at with a
+great longing, from the beginning; and doing this, she contrived
+with carbolic soap and a separate suds, and a bit of sponge, to give
+the neglected little heads a most salutary dressing.
+
+Saturday grew into bath-day; soap-suds suggested bubbles; and the
+ducking and the bubbling were a frolic altogether.
+
+Then Hazel wished they could be put into clean clothes each time;
+wouldn't it do, somehow?
+
+But that would cost. Luclarion had come to the limit of her purse;
+Hazel had no purse, and Desire's was small.
+
+"But you see they've _got_ to have it," said Hazel; and so she went
+to her mother, and from her straight to Uncle Oldways.
+
+They counted up,--she and Desire, and Diana; two little common
+suits, of stockings, underclothes, and calico gowns, apiece;
+somebody to do a washing once a week, ready for the change; and
+then--"those horrid shoes!"
+
+"I don't see how you can do it," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "The things
+will be taken away from them, and sold. You would have to keep
+doing, over and over, to no purpose, I am afraid."
+
+"I'll see to that," said Luclarion, facing her "stump." "We'll do
+for them we can do for; if it ain't ones, it will be tothers. Those
+that don't keep their things, can't have 'em; and if they're taken
+away, I won't sell bread to the women they belong to, till they're
+brought back. Besides, the _washing_ kind of sorts 'em out,
+beforehand. 'Taint the worst ones that are willing to come, or to
+send, for that. You always have to work in at an edge, in anything,
+and make your way as you go along. It'll regulate. I'm _living_
+there right amongst 'em; I've got a clew, and a hold; I can follow
+things up; I shall have a 'circle;' there's circles everywhere. And
+in all the wheels there's a moving _spirit_; you ain't got to depend
+just on yourself. Things work; the Lord sees to it; it's _His_
+business as much as yours."
+
+Hazel told Uncle Titus that there were shoes and stockings and gowns
+wanted down in Neighbor Street; things for ten children; they must
+have subscriptions. And so she had come to him.
+
+The Ripwinkleys had never given Uncle Titus a Christmas or a
+birthday present, for fear they should seem to establish a mutual
+precedent. They had never talked of their plans which involved
+calculation, before him; they were terribly afraid of just one thing
+with him, and only that one,--of anything most distantly like what
+Desire Ledwith called "a Megilp bespeak." But now Hazel went up to
+him as bold as a lion. She took it for granted he was like other
+people,--"real folks;" that he would do--what must be done.
+
+"How much will it cost?"
+
+"For clothes and shoes for each child, about eight dollars for three
+months, we guess," said Hazel. "Mother's going to pay for the
+washing!"
+
+"_Guess_? Haven't you calculated?"
+
+"Yes, sir. 'Guess' and 'calculate' mean the same thing in Yankee,"
+said Hazel, laughing.
+
+Uncle Titus laughed in and out, in his queer way, with his shoulders
+going up and down.
+
+Then he turned round, on his swivel chair, to his desk, and wrote a
+check for one hundred dollars.
+
+"There. See how far you can make that go."
+
+"That's good," said Hazel, heartily, looking at it; "that's
+splendid!" and never gave him a word of personal thanks. It was a
+thing for mutual congratulations, rather, it would seem; the "good"
+was just what they all wanted, and there it was. Why should anybody
+in particular be thanked, as if anybody in particular had asked for
+anything? She did not say this, or think it; she simply did not
+think about it at all.
+
+And Uncle Oldways--again--liked it.
+
+There! I shall not try, now, to tell you any more; their
+experiences, their difficulties, their encouragements, would make
+large material for a much larger book. I want you to know of the
+idea, and the attempt. If they fail, partly,--if drunken fathers
+steal the shoes, and the innocent have to forfeit for the
+guilty,--if the bad words still come to the lips often, though Hazel
+tells them they are not "nice,"--and beginning at the outside, they
+are in a fair way of learning the niceness of being nice,--if some
+children come once or twice, and get dressed up, and then go off
+and live in the gutters again until the clothes are gone,--are these
+real failures? There is a bright, pure place down there in Neighbor
+Street, and twice a week some little children have there a bright,
+pure time. Will this be lost in the world? In the great Ledger of
+God will it always stand unbalanced on the debit side?
+
+If you are afraid it will fail,--will be swallowed up in the great
+sink of vice and misery, like a single sweet, fresh drop, sweet only
+while it is falling,--go and do likewise; rain down more; make the
+work larger, stronger; pour the sweetness in faster, till the wide,
+grand time of full refreshing shall have come from the presence of
+the Lord!
+
+Ada Geoffrey went down and helped. Miss Craydocke is going to knit
+scarlet stockings all winter for them; Mr. Geoffrey has put a
+regular bath-room in for Luclarion, with half partitions, and three
+separate tubs; Mrs. Geoffrey has furnished a dormitory, where little
+homeless ones can be kept to sleep. Luclarion has her hands full,
+and has taken in a girl to help her, whose board and wages Rachel
+Froke and Asenath Scherman pay. A thing like that spreads every way;
+you have only to be among, and one of--Real Folks.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Desire, besides her work in Neighbor Street, has gone into the
+Normal School. She wants to make herself fit for any teaching; she
+wants also to know and to become a companion of earnest, working
+girls.
+
+She told Uncle Titus this, after she had been with him a month, and
+had thought it over; and Uncle Titus agreed, quite as if it were no
+real concern of his, but a very proper and unobjectionable plan for
+her, if she liked it.
+
+One day, though, when Marmaduke Wharne--who had come this fall again
+to stay his three days, and talk over their business,--sat with him
+in his study, just where they had sat two years and a little more
+ago, and Hazel and Desire ran up and down stairs together, in and
+out upon their busy Wednesday errands,--Marmaduke said to Titus,--
+
+"Afterwards is a long time, friend; but I mistrust you have found
+the comfort, as well as the providence, of 'next of kin?'"
+
+"Afterwards _is_ a long time," said Titus Oldways, gravely; "but the
+Lord's line of succession stretches all the way through."
+
+And that same night he had his other old friend, Miss Craydocke, in;
+and he brought two papers that he had ready, quietly out to be
+signed, each with four names: "Titus Oldways," by itself, on the one
+side; on the other,--
+
+          "RACHEL FROKE,
+           MARMADUKE WHARNE,
+           KEREN-HAPPUCH CRAYDOCKE."
+
+And one of those two papers--which are no further part of the
+present story, seeing that good old Uncle Titus is at this moment
+alive and well, as he has a perfect right, and is heartily welcome
+to be, whether the story ever comes to a regular winding up or
+not--was laid safely away in a japanned box in a deep drawer of his
+study table; and Marmaduke Wharne put the other in his pocket.
+
+He and Titus knew. I myself guess, and perhaps you do; but neither
+you nor I, nor Rachel, nor Keren-happuch, know for certain; and it
+is no sort of matter whether we do or not.
+
+The "next of kin" is a better and a deeper thing than any claim of
+law or register of bequest can show. Titus Oldways had found that
+out; and he had settled in his mind, to his restful and satisfied
+belief, that God, to the last moment of His time, and the last
+particle of His created substance, can surely care for and order and
+direct His own.
+
+Is that end and moral enough for a two years' watchful trial and a
+two years' simple tale?
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+THE HORSESHOE.
+
+
+They laid out the Waite Place in this manner:--
+
+Right into the pretty wooded pasture, starting from a point a little
+way down the road from the old house, they projected a roadway which
+swept round, horseshoe fashion, till it met itself again within a
+space of some twenty yards or so; and this sweep made a
+frontage--upon its inclosed bit of natural, moss-turfed green,
+sprinkled with birch and pine and oak trees, and with gray
+out-croppings of rock here and there--for the twenty houses, behind
+which opened the rest of the unspoiled, irregular, open slope and
+swell and dingle of the hill-foot tract that dipped down at one
+reach, we know, to the river.
+
+The trees, and shrubs, and vines, and ferns, and stones, were left
+in their wild prettiness; only some roughness of nature's wear and
+tear of dead branches and broken brushwood, and the like, were taken
+away, and the little footpaths cleared for pleasant walking.
+
+There were all the little shady, sweet-smelling nooks, just as they
+had been; all the little field-parlors, opening with their winding
+turns between bush and rock, one into another. The twenty households
+might find twenty separate places, if they all wanted to take a
+private out-door tea at once.
+
+The cellars were dug; the frames were up; workmen were busy with
+brick and mortar, hammer and plane; two or three buildings were
+nearly finished, and two--the two standing at the head of the
+Horseshoe, looking out at the back into the deepest and pleasantest
+wood-aisle, where the leaves were reddening and mellowing in the
+early October frost, and the ferns were turning into tender
+transparent shades of palest straw-color--were completed, and had
+dwellers in them; the cheeriest, and happiest, and coziest of
+neighbors; and who do you think these were?
+
+Miss Waite and Delia, of course, in one house; and with them,
+dividing the easy rent and the space that was ample for four women,
+were Lucilla Waters and her mother. In the other, were Kenneth and
+Rosamond Kincaid and Dorris.
+
+Kenneth and Rosamond had been married just three weeks. Rosamond had
+told him she would begin the world with him, and they had begun.
+Begun in the simple, true old-fashioned way, in which, if people
+only would believe it, it is even yet not impossible for young men
+and women to inaugurate their homes.
+
+They could not have had a place at Westover, and a horse and buggy
+for Kenneth to go back and forth with; nor even a house in one of
+the best streets of Z----; and down at East Square everything was
+very modern and pretentious, based upon the calculation of rising
+values and a rush of population.
+
+But here was this new neighborhood of--well, yes,--"model houses;" a
+blessed Christian speculation for a class not easily or often
+reached by any speculations save those that grind and consume their
+little regular means, by forcing upon them the lawless and arbitrary
+prices of the day, touching them at every point in their _living_,
+but not governing correspondingly their income, as even the
+hod-carrier's and railroad navvy's daily pay is reached and ruled to
+meet the proportion of the time.
+
+They would be plain, simple, little-cultured people that would live
+there: the very "betwixt and betweens" that Rosamond had used to
+think so hardly fated. Would she go and live among them, in one of
+these little new, primitive homes, planted down in the pasture-land,
+on the outskirts? Would she--the pretty, graceful, elegant
+Rosamond--live semi-detached with old Miss Arabel Waite?
+
+That was just exactly the very thing she would do; the thing she did
+not even let Kenneth think of first, and ask her, but that, when
+they had fully agreed that they would begin life somehow, in some
+right way together, according to their means, she herself had
+questioned him if they might not do.
+
+And so the houses were hurried in the building; for old Miss Arabel
+must have hers before the winter; (it seems strange how often the
+change comes when one could not have waited any longer for it;) and
+Kenneth had mill building, and surveying, and planning, in East
+Square, and Mr. Roger Marchbanks' great gray-stone mansion going up
+on West Hill, to keep him busy; work enough for any talented young
+fellow, fresh from the School of Technology, who had got fair hold
+of a beginning, to settle down among and grasp the "next things"
+that were pretty sure to follow along after the first.
+
+Dorris has all Ruth's music scholars, and more; for there has never
+been anybody to replace Miss Robbyns, and there are many young girls
+in Z----, and down here in East Square, who want good teaching and
+cannot go away to get it. She has also the organ-playing in the new
+church.
+
+She keeps her morning hours and her Saturdays to help Rosamond; for
+they are "coöperating" here, in the new home; what was the use,
+else, of having coöperated in the old? Rosamond cannot bear to have
+any coarse, profane fingers laid upon her little household
+gods,--her wedding-tins and her feather dusters,--while the first
+gloss and freshness are on, at any rate; and with her dainty handling,
+the gloss is likely to last a long while.
+
+Such neighbors, too, as the Waites and Waterses are! How they helped
+in the fitting up, running in in odd half hours from their own
+nailing and placing, which they said could wait awhile, since they
+weren't brides; and such real old times visiting as they have
+already between the houses; coming and taking right hold, with
+wiping up dinner plates as likely as not, if that is the thing in
+hand; picking up what is there, as easily as "the girls" used to
+help work out some last new pattern of crochet, or try over music,
+or sort worsteds for gorgeous affghans for the next great fair!
+
+Miss Arabel is apt to come in after dinner, and have a dab at the
+plates; she knows she interrupts nothing then; and she "has never
+been used to sitting talking, with gloves on and a parasol in her
+lap." And now she has given up trying to make impossible biases, she
+has such a quantity of time!
+
+It was the matter of receiving visits from her friends who _did_ sit
+with their parasols in their laps, or who only expected to see the
+house, or look over wedding presents, that would be the greatest
+hindrance, Rosamond realized at once; that is, if she would let it;
+so she did just the funniest thing, perhaps, that ever a bride did
+do: she set her door wide open from her pretty parlor, with its
+books and flowers and pictures and window-draperies of hanging
+vines, into the plain, cozy little kitchen, with its tin pans and
+bright new buckets and its Shaker chairs; and when she was busy
+there, asked her girl-friends right in, as she had used to take them
+up into her bedroom, if she were doing anything pretty or had
+something to show.
+
+And they liked it, for the moment, at any rate; they could not help
+it; they thought it was lovely; a kind of bewitching little play at
+keeping house; though some of them went away and wondered, and said
+that Rosamond Holabird had quite changed all her way of living and
+her position; it was very splendid and strong-minded, they supposed;
+but they never should have thought it of her, and of course she
+could not keep it up.
+
+"And the neighborhood!" was the cry. "The rabble she has got, and is
+going to have, round her! All planks and sand, and tubs of mortar,
+now; you have to half break your neck in getting up there; and when
+it is settled it will be--such a frowze of common people! Why the
+foreman of our factory has engaged a house, and Mrs. Haslam, who
+actually used to do up laces for mamma, has got another!"
+
+That is what is said--in some instances--over on West Hill, when the
+elegant visitors came home from calling at the Horseshoe. Meanwhile,
+what Rosamond does is something like this, which she happened to do
+one bright afternoon a very little while ago.
+
+She and Dorris had just made and baked a charming little tea-cake,
+which was set on a fringed napkin in a round white china dish, and
+put away in the fresh, oak-grained kitchen pantry, where not a crumb
+or a slop had ever yet been allowed to rest long enough to defile or
+give a flavor of staleness; out of which everything is tidily used
+up while it is nice, and into which little delicate new-made bits
+like this, for next meals, are always going.
+
+The tea-table itself,--with its three plates, and its new silver,
+and the pretty, thin, shallow cups and saucers, that an Irish girl
+would break a half-dozen of every week,--was laid with exquisite
+preciseness; the square white napkins at top and bottom over the
+crimson cloth, spread to the exactness of a line, and every knife
+and fork at fair right angles; the loaf was upon the white carved
+trencher, and nothing to be done when Kenneth should come in, but to
+draw the tea, and bring the brown cake forth.
+
+Rosamond will not leave all these little doings to break up the
+pleasant time of his return; she will have her leisure then, let her
+be as busy as she may while he is away.
+
+There was an hour or more after all was done; even after the
+Panjandrums had made their state call, leaving their barouche at the
+heel of the Horseshoe, and filling up all Rosamond's little
+vestibule with their flounces, as they came in and went out.
+
+The Panjandrums were new people at West Hill; very new and very
+grand, as only new things and new people can be, turned out in the
+latest style pushed to the last agony. Mrs. Panjandrum's dress was
+all in two shades of brown, to the tips of her feathers, and the
+toes of her boots, and the frill of her parasol; and her carriage
+was all in two shades of brown, likewise; cushions, and tassels,
+and panels; the horses themselves were cream-color, with dark
+manes and tails. Next year, perhaps, everything will be in
+pansy-colors,--black and violet and gold; and then she will probably
+have black horses with gilded harness and royal purple tails.
+
+It was very good of the Panjandrums, doubtless, to come down to the
+Horseshoe at all; I am willing to give them all the credit of really
+admiring Rosamond, and caring to see her in her little new home; but
+there are two other things to be considered also: the novel kind of
+home Rosamond had chosen to set up, and the human weakness of
+curiosity concerning all experiments, and friends in all new lights;
+also the fact of that other establishment shortly to branch out of
+the Holabird connection. The family could not quite go under water,
+even with people of the Panjandrum persuasion, while there was such
+a pair of prospective corks to float them as Mr. and Mrs. Dakie
+Thayne.
+
+The Panjandrum carriage had scarcely bowled away, when a little
+buggy and a sorrel pony came up the road, and somebody alighted with
+a brisk spring, slipped the rein with a loose knot through the
+fence-rail at the corner, and came up one side of the two-plank
+foot-walk that ran around the Horseshoe; somebody who had come home
+unexpectedly, to take his little wife to ride. Kenneth Kincaid had
+business over at the new district of "Clarendon Park."
+
+Drives, and livery-stable bills, were no part of the items allowed
+for, in the programme of these young people's living; therefore
+Rosamond put on her gray hat, with its soft little dove's breast,
+and took her bright-striped shawl upon her arm, and let Kenneth lift
+her into the buggy--for which there was no manner of need except
+that they both liked it,--with very much the feeling as if she were
+going off on a lovely bridal trip. They had had no bridal trip, you
+see; they did not really want one; and this little impromptu drive
+was such a treat!
+
+Now the wonders of nature and the human mind show--if I must go so
+far to find an argument for the statement I am making--that into a
+single point of time or particle of matter may be gathered the
+relations of a solar system or the experiences of a life; that a
+universe may be compressed into an atom, or a molecule expanded into
+a macrocosm; therefore I expect nobody to sneer at my Rosamond as
+childishly nappy in her simple honeymoon, or at me for making
+extravagant and unsupported assertions, when I say that this hour
+and a half, and these four miles out to Clarendon Park and
+back,--the lifting and the tucking in, and the setting off, the
+sitting side by side in the ripe October air and the golden
+twilight, the noting together every pretty turn, every flash of
+autumn color in the woods, every change in the cloud-groupings
+overhead, every glimpse of busy, bright-eyed squirrels up and down
+the walls, every cozy, homely group of barnyard creatures at the
+farmsteads, the change, the pleasure, the thought of home and
+always-togetherness,--all this made the little treat of a country
+ride as much to them, holding all that any wandering up and down the
+whole world in their new companionship could hold,--as a going to
+Europe, or a journey to mountains and falls and sea-sides and
+cities, in a skimming of the States. You cannot have more than there
+is; and you do not care, for more than just what stands for and
+emphasizes the essential beauty, the living gladness, that no
+_place_ gives, but that hearts carry about into places and baptize
+them with, so that ever afterward a tender charm hangs round them,
+because "we saw it _then_."
+
+And Kenneth and Rosamond Kincaid had all these bright associations,
+these beautiful glamours, these glad reminders, laid up for years to
+come, in a four miles space that they might ride or walk over,
+re-living it all, in the returning Octobers of many other years. I
+say they had a bridal tour that day, and that the four miles were as
+good as four thousand. Such little bits of signs may stand for such
+high, great, blessed things!
+
+"How lovely stillness and separateness are!" said Rosamond as they
+sat in the buggy, stopping to enjoy a glimpse of the river on one
+side, and a flame of burning bushes on the other, against the dark
+face of a piece of woods that held the curve of road in which they
+stood, in sheltered quiet. "How pretty a house would be, up on that
+knoll. Do you know things puzzle me a little, Kenneth? I have almost
+come to a certain conclusion lately, that people are not meant to
+live apart, but that it is really everybody's duty to live in a
+town, or a village, or in some gathering of human beings together.
+Life tends to that, and all the needs and uses of it; and yet,--it
+is so sweet in a place like this,--and however kind and social you
+may be, it seems once in a while such an escape! Do you believe in
+beautiful country places, and in having a little piece of creation
+all to yourself, if you can get it, or if not what do you suppose
+all creation is made for?"
+
+"Perhaps just that which you have said, Rose." Rosamond has now,
+what her mother hinted once, somebody to call her "Rose," with a
+happy and beautiful privilege. "Perhaps to escape into. Not for one,
+here and there, selfishly, all the time; but for the whole, with
+fair share and opportunity. Creation is made very big, you see, and
+men and women are made without wings, and with very limited hands
+and feet. Also with limited lives; that makes the time-question, and
+the hurry. There is a suggestion,--at any rate, a necessity,--in
+that. It brings them within certain spaces, always. In spite of all
+the artificial lengthening of railroads and telegraphs, there must
+still be centres for daily living, intercourse, and need. People
+tend to towns; they cannot establish themselves in isolated
+independence. Yet packing and stifling are a cruelty and a sin. I do
+not believe there ought to be any human being so poor as to be
+forced to such crowding. The very way we are going to live at the
+Horseshoe, seems to me an individual solution of the problem. It
+ought to come to pass that our towns should be built--and if built
+already, wrongly, _thinned out_,--on this principle. People are
+coming to learn a little of this, and are opening parks and squares
+in the great cities, finding that there must be room for bodies and
+souls to reach out and breathe. If they could only take hold of some
+of their swarming-places, where disease and vice are festering, and
+pull down every second house and turn it into a garden space, I
+believe they would do more for reform and salvation than all their
+separate institutions for dealing with misery after it is let grow,
+can ever effect."
+
+"O, why _can't_ they?" cried Rose. "There is money enough,
+somewhere. Why can't they do it, instead of letting the cities grow
+horrid, and then running away from it themselves, and buying acres
+and acres around their country places, for fear somebody should come
+too near, and the country should begin to grow horrid too?"
+
+"Because the growing and the crowding and the striving of the city
+_make_ so much of the money, little wife! Because to keep everybody
+fairly comfortable as the world goes along, there could not be so
+many separate piles laid up; it would have to be used more as it
+comes, and it could not come so fast. If nobody cared to be very
+rich, and all were willing to live simply and help one another, in
+little 'horseshoe neighborhoods,' there wouldn't be so much that
+looks like grand achievement in the world perhaps; but I think maybe
+the very angels might show themselves out of the unseen, and bring
+the glory of heaven into it!"
+
+Kenneth's color came, and his eyes glowed, as he spoke these words
+that burst into eloquence with the intensity of his meaning; and
+Rosamond's face was holy-pale, and her look large, as she listened;
+and they were silent for a minute or so, as the pony, of his own
+accord, trotted deliberately on.
+
+"But then, the beauty, and the leisure, and all that grows out of
+them to separate minds, and what the world gets through the
+refinement of it! You see the puzzle comes back. Must we never, in
+this life, gather round us the utmost that the world is capable of
+furnishing? Must we never, out of this big creation, have the piece
+to ourselves, each one as he would choose?"
+
+"I think the Lord would show us a way out of that," said Kenneth. "I
+think He would make His world turn out right, and all come to good
+and sufficient use, if we did not put it in a snarl. Perhaps we can
+hardly guess what we might grow to all together,--'the whole body,
+fitly joined by that which every joint supplieth, increasing and
+building itself up in love.' And about the quietness, and the
+separateness,--we don't want to _live_ in that, Rose; we only want
+it sometimes, to make us fitter to live. When the disciples began to
+talk about building tabernacles on the mountain of the vision,
+Christ led them straight down among the multitude, where there was a
+devil to be cast out. It is the same thing in the old story of the
+creation. God worked six days, and rested one."
+
+"Well," said Rose, drawing a deep breath, "I am glad we have begun
+at the Horseshoe! It was a great escape for me, Kenneth. I am such a
+worldly girl in my heart. I should have liked so much to have
+everything elegant and artistic about me."
+
+"I think you do. I think you always will. Not because of the
+worldliness in you, though; but the _other_-worldliness, the sense
+of real beauty and truth. And I am glad that we have begun at all!
+It was a greater escape for me. I was in danger of all sorts of
+hardness and unbelief. I had begun to despise and hate things,
+because they did not work rightly just around me. And then I fell
+in, just in time, with some real, true people; and then you came,
+with the 'little piece of your world,' and then I came here, and saw
+what your world was, and how you were making it, Rose! How a little
+community of sweet and generous fellowship was crystallizing here
+among all sorts--outward sorts--of people; a little community of the
+kingdom; and how you and yours had done it."
+
+"O, Kenneth! I was the worst little atom in the whole crystal! I
+only got into my place because everybody else did, and there was
+nothing else left for me to do."
+
+"You see I shall never believe that," said Kenneth, quietly. "There
+is no flaw in the crystal. You were all polarized alike. And
+besides, can't I see daily just how your nature draws and points?"
+
+"Well, never mind," said Rose. "Only some particles are natural
+magnets, I believe, and some get magnetized by contact. Now that we
+have hit upon this metaphor, isn't it funny that our little social
+experiment should have taken the shape of a horseshoe?"
+
+"The most sociable, because the most magnetic, shape it could take.
+You will see the power it will develop. There's a great deal in
+merely taking form according to fundamental principles. Witness the
+getting round a fireside. Isn't that a horseshoe? And could half as
+much sympathy be evolved from a straight line?"
+
+"I believe in firesides," said Rose.
+
+"And in women who can organize and inform them," said Kenneth.
+"First, firesides; then neighborhoods; that is the way the world's
+life works out; and women have their hands at the heart of it. They
+can do so much more there than by making the laws! When the life is
+right, the laws will make themselves, or be no longer needed. They
+are such mere outside patchwork,--makeshifts till a better time!"
+
+"Wrong living must make wrong laws, whoever does the voting," said
+Rosamond, sagely.
+
+"False social standards make false commercial ones; inflated
+pretensions demand inflated currency; selfish, untrue domestic
+living eventuates in greedy speculations and business shams; and all
+in the intriguing for corrupt legislation, to help out partial
+interests. It isn't by multiplying the voting power, but by
+purifying it, that the end is to be reached."
+
+"That is so sententious, Kenneth, that I shall have to take it home
+and ravel it out gradually in my mind in little shreds. In the mean
+while, dear, suppose we stop in the village, and get some little
+brown-ware cups for top-overs. You never ate any of my top-overs?
+Well, when you do, you'll say that all the world ought to be brought
+up on top-overs."
+
+Rosamond was very particular about her little brown-ware cups. They
+had to be real stone,--brown outside, and gray-blue in; and they
+must be of a special size and depth. When they were found, and done
+up in a long parcel, one within another, in stout paper, she carried
+it herself to the chaise, and would scarcely let Kenneth hold it
+while she got in; after which, she laid it carefully across her lap,
+instead of putting it behind upon the cushion.
+
+'You see they were rather dear; but they are the only kind worth
+while. Those little yellow things would soak and crack, and never
+look comfortable in the kitchen-closet. I give you very fair
+warning, I shall always want the best of things but then I shall
+take very fierce and jealous care of them,--like this.'
+
+And she laid her little nicely-gloved hand across her homely
+parcel, guardingly.
+
+How nice it was to go buying little homely things together! Again,
+it was as good and pleasant,--and meant ever so much more,--than if
+it had been ordering china with a monogram in Dresden, or glass in
+Prague, with a coat-of-arms engraved.
+
+When they drove up to the Horseshoe, Dakie Thayne and Ruth met them.
+They had been getting "spiritual ferns" and sumach leaves with
+Dorris; "the dearest little tips," Ruth said, "of scarlet and
+carbuncle, just like jets of fire."
+
+And now they would go back to tea, and eat up the brown cake?
+
+"Real Westover summum-bonum cake?" Dakie wanted to know. "Well, he
+couldn't stand against that. Come, Ruthie!" And Ruthie came.
+
+"What do you think Rosamond says?" said Kenneth, at the tea-table,
+over the cake. "That everybody ought to live in a city or a village,
+or, at least, a Horseshoe. She thinks nobody has a right to stick
+his elbows out, in this world. She's in a great hurry to be packed
+as closely as possible here."
+
+"I wish the houses were all finished, and our neighbors in; that is
+what I said," said Rosamond. "I should like to begin to know about
+them, and feel settled; and to see flowers in their windows, and
+lights at night."
+
+"And you always hated so a 'little crowd!'" said Ruth.
+
+"It isn't a crowd when they _don't_ crowd," said Rosamond. "I can't
+bear little miserable jostles."
+
+"How good it will be to see Rosamond here, at the head of her court;
+at the top of the Horseshoe," said Dakie Thayne. "She will be quite
+the 'Queen of the County.'"
+
+"Don't!" said Rosamond. "I've a very weak spot in my head. You can't
+tell the mischief you might do. No, I won't be queen!"
+
+"Any more than you can help," said Dakie.
+
+"She'll be Rosa Mundi, wherever she is," said Ruth affectionately.
+
+"I think that is just grand of Kenneth and Rosamond," said Dakie
+Thayne, as he and Ruth were walking home up West Hill in the
+moonlight, afterward. "What do you think you and I ought to do, one
+of these days, Ruthie? It sets me to considering. There are more
+Horseshoes to make, I suppose, if the world is to jog on."
+
+"_You_ have a great deal to consider about," said Ruth,
+thoughtfully. "It was quite easy for Kenneth and Rosamond to
+see what they ought to do. But you might make a great many
+Horseshoes,--or something!"
+
+"What do you mean by that second person plural, eh? Are you shirking
+your responsibilities, or are you addressing your imaginary
+Boffinses? Come, Ruthie, I can't have that! Say 'we,' and I'll face
+the responsibilities and talk it all out; but I won't have anything
+to do with 'you!'"
+
+"Won't you?" said Ruth, with piteous demureness. "How can I say
+'we,' then?"
+
+"You little cat! How you can scratch!"
+
+"There are such great things to be done in the world Dakie," Ruth
+said seriously, when they had got over that with a laugh that lifted
+her nicely by the "we" question. "I can't help thinking of it."
+
+"O," said Dakie, with significant satisfaction. "We're getting on
+better. Well?"
+
+"Do you know what Hazel Ripwinkley is doing? And what Luclarion
+Grapp has done? Do you know how they are going among poor people, in
+dreadful places,--really living among them, Luclarion is,--and
+finding out, and helping, and showing how? I thought of that
+to-night, when they talked about living in cities and villages.
+Luclarion has gone away down to the very bottom of it. And somehow,
+one can't feel satisfied with only reaching half-way, when one
+knows--and might!"
+
+"Do you mean, Ruthie, that you and I might go and _live_ in such
+places? Do you think I could take you there?"
+
+"I don't know, Dakie," Ruth answered, forgetting in her earnestness,
+to blush or hesitate for what he said;--"but I feel as if we ought
+to reach down, somehow,--_away_ down! Because that, you see, is the
+_most_. And to do only a little, in an easy way, when we are made so
+strong to do; wouldn't it be a waste of power, and a missing of the
+meaning? Isn't it the 'much' that is required of us, Dakie?"
+
+They were under the tall hedge of the Holabird "parcel of ground,"
+on the Westover slope, and close to the home gates. Dakie Thayne put
+his arm round Ruth as she said that, and drew her to him.
+
+"We will go and be neighbors somewhere, Ruthie. And we will make as
+big a Horseshoe as we can."
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+MORNING GLORIES.
+
+
+And Desire?
+
+Do you think I have passed her over lightly in her troubles? Or do
+you think I am making her out to have herself passed over them
+lightly?
+
+Do you think it is hardly to be believed that she should have turned
+round from these shocks and pains that bore down so heavily and all
+at once upon her, and taken kindly to the living with old Uncle
+Titus and Rachel Froke in the Greenley Street house, and going down
+to Luclarion Grapp's to help wash little children's faces, and teach
+them how to have innocent good times? Do you think there is little
+making up in all that for her, while Rosamond Kincaid is happy in
+her new home, and Ruth and Dakie Thayne are looking out together
+over the world,--which can be nowhere wholly sad to them, since they
+are to go down into it together,--and planning how to make long arms
+with their wealth, to reach the largest neighborhood they can? In
+the first place, do you know how full the world is, all around you,
+of things that are missed by those who say nothing, but go on living
+somehow without them? Do you know how large a part of life, even
+young life, is made of the days that have never been lived? Do you
+guess how many girls, like Desire, come near something that they
+think they might have had, and then see it drift by just beyond
+their reach, to fall easily into some other hand that seems hardly
+put out to grasp it?
+
+And do you see, or feel, or guess how life goes on, incompleteness
+and all, and things settle themselves one way, if not another,
+simply because the world does not stop, but keeps turning, and
+tossing off days and nights like time-bubbles just the same?
+
+Do you ever imagine how different this winter's parties are from
+last, or this summer's visit or journey from those of the summer
+gone,--to many a maiden who has her wardrobe made up all the same,
+and takes her German or her music lessons, and goes in and out, and
+has her ticket to the Symphony Concerts, and is no different to look
+at, unless perhaps with a little of the first color-freshness gone
+out of her face,--while secretly it seems to her as if the sweet
+early symphony of her life were all played out, and had ended in a
+discord?
+
+We begin, most of us, much as we are to go on. Real or mistaken, the
+experiences of eighteen initiate the lesson that those of two and
+three score after years are needed to unfold and complete. What is
+left of us is continually turning round, perforce, to take up with
+what is left of the world, and make the best of it.
+
+Thus much for what does happen, for what we have to put up with, for
+the mere philosophy of endurance, and the possibility of things
+being endured. We do live out our years, and get and bear it all.
+And the scars do not show much outside; nay, even we ourselves can
+lay a finger on the place, after a little time, without a cringe.
+
+Desire Ledwith did what she had to do; there was a way made for her,
+and there was still life left.
+
+But there is a better reading of the riddle. There is never a
+"Might-have-been" that touches with a sting, but reveals also to us
+an inner glimpse of the wide and beautiful "May Be." It is all
+there; somebody else has it now while we wait; but the years of God
+are full of satisfying, each soul shall have its turn; it is His
+good _pleasure_ to give us the kingdom. There is so much room, there
+are such thronging possibilities, there is such endless hope!
+
+To feel this, one must feel, however dimly, the inner realm, out of
+which the shadows of this life come and pass, to interpret to us the
+laid up reality.
+
+"The real world is the inside world."
+
+Desire Ledwith blessed Uncle Oldways in her heart for giving her
+that word.
+
+It comforted her for her father. If his life here had been hard,
+toilsome, mistaken even; if it had never come to that it might have
+come to; if she, his own child, had somehow missed the reality of
+him here, and he of her,--was he not passed now into the within?
+Might she not find him there; might they not silently and
+spiritually, without sign, but needing no sign, begin to understand
+each other now? Was not the real family just beginning to be born
+into the real home?
+
+Ah, that word _real_! How deep we have to go to find the root of it!
+It is fast by the throne of God; in the midst.
+
+Hazel Ripwinkley talked about "real folks." She sifted, and she
+found out instinctively the true livers, the genuine _neahburs_,
+nigh-dwellers; they who abide alongside in spirit, who shall find
+each other in the everlasting neighborhood, when the veil falls.
+
+But there, behind,--how little, in our petty outside vexations or
+gladnesses, we stop to think of or perceive it!--is the actual, even
+the present, inhabiting; there is the kingdom, the continuing city,
+the real heaven and earth in which we already live and labor, and
+build up our homes and lay up our treasure and the loving Christ,
+and the living Father, and the innumerable company of angels, and
+the unseen compassing about of friends gone in there, and they on
+this earth who truly belong to us inwardly, however we and they may
+be bodily separated,--are the Real Folks!
+
+What matters a little pain, outside? Go _in_, and rest from it!
+
+There is where the joy is, that we read outwardly, spelling by
+parts imperfectly, in our own and others' mortal experience; there
+is the content of homes, the beauty of love, the delight of
+friendship,--not shut in to any one or two, but making the common
+air that all souls breathe. No one heart can be happy, that all
+hearts may not have a share of it. Rosamond and Kenneth, Dakie and
+Ruth, cannot live out obviously any sweetness of living, cannot
+sing any notes of the endless, beautiful score, that Desire
+Ledwith, and Luclarion Grapp, and Rachel Froke, and Hapsie
+Craydocke, and old Miss Arabel Waite, do not just as truly get the
+blessed grace and understanding of; do not catch and feel the
+perfect and abounding harmony of. Since why? No lip can sound more
+than its own few syllables of music; no life show more than its
+own few accidents and incidents and groupings; the vast melody,
+the rich, eternal satisfying, are behind; and the signs are for us
+all!
+
+You may not think this, or see it so, in your first tussle and
+set-to with the disappointing and eluding things that seem the real
+and only,--missing which you miss all. This chapter may be less to
+you--less _for_ you, perhaps--than for your elders; the story may
+have ended, as to that you care for, some pages back; but for all
+that, this is certain; and Desire Ledwith has begun to find it, for
+she is one of those true, grand spirits to whom personal loss or
+frustration are most painful as they seem to betoken something
+wrong or failed in the general scheme and justice. This terrible
+"why should it be?" once answered,--once able to say to themselves
+quietly, "It is all right; the beauty and the joy are there; the
+song is sung, though we are of the listeners; the miracle-play is
+played, though but a few take literal part, and many of us look on,
+with the play, like the song, moving through our souls only, or our
+souls moving in the vital sphere of it, where the stage is wide
+enough for all;"--once come to this, they have entered already into
+that which is behind, and nothing of all that goes forth thence into
+the earth to make its sunshine can be shut off from them forever.
+
+Desire is learning to be glad, thinking of Kenneth and Rosamond,
+that this fair marriage should have been. It is so just and exactly
+best; Rosamond's sweet graciousness is so precisely what Kenneth's
+sterner way needed to have shine upon it; her finding and making of
+all manner of pleasantness will be so good against his sharp
+discernment of the wrong; they will so beautifully temper and
+sustain each other!
+
+Desire is so generous, so glad of the truth, that she can stand
+aside, and let this better thing be, and say to herself that it _is_
+better.
+
+Is not this that she is growing to inwardly, more blessed than any
+marriage or giving in marriage? Is it not a partaking of the
+heavenly Marriage Supper?
+
+"We two might have grumbled at the world until we grumbled at each
+other."
+
+She even said that, calmly and plainly, to herself.
+
+And then that manna was fed to her afresh of which she had been
+given first to eat so long a while ago; that thought of "the Lamb in
+the midst of the Throne" came back to her. Of the Tenderness deep
+within the Almightiness that holds all earth and heaven and time and
+circumstance in its grasp. Her little, young, ignorant human heart
+begins to rest in that great warmth and gentleness; begins to be
+glad to wait there for what shall arise out of it, moving the
+Almightiness for her,--even on purpose for her,--in the by-and-by;
+she begins to be sure; of what, she knows not,--but of a great,
+blessed, beautiful something, that just because she is at all, shall
+be for her; that she shall have a part, somehow, even in the
+_showing_ of His good; that into the beautiful miracle-play she
+shall be called, and a new song be given her, also, to sing in the
+grand, long, perfect oratorio; she begins to pray quietly, that,
+"loving the Lord, always above all things, she may obtain His
+promises, which exceed all that she can desire."
+
+And waiting, resting, believing, she begins also to work. This
+beginning is even as an ending and forehaving, to any human soul.
+
+I will tell you how she woke one morning; of a little poem that
+wrote itself along her chamber wall.
+
+It was a square, pleasant old room, with a window in an angle toward
+the east. A great, old-fashioned mirror hung opposite, between the
+windows that looked out north-westwardly; the morning and the
+evening light came in upon her. Beside the solid, quaint old
+furnishings of a long past time, there were also around her the
+things she had been used to at home; her own little old
+rocking-chair, her desk and table, and her toilet and mantel
+ornaments and things of use. A pair of candle-branches with dropping
+lustres,--that she had marveled at and delighted in as a child, and
+had begged for herself when they fell into disuse in the
+drawing-room,--stood upon the chimney along which the first
+sun-rays glanced. Just in those days of the year, they struck in so
+as to shine level through the clear prisms, and break into a hundred
+little rainbows.
+
+She opened her eyes, this fair October morning, and lay and looked
+at the little scattered glories.
+
+All around the room, on walls, curtains, ceiling,--falling like
+bright soft jewels upon table and floor, touching everything with a
+magic splendor,--were globes and shafts of colored light. Softly
+blended from glowing red to tenderly fervid blue, they lay in
+various forms and fragments, as the beam refracted or the objects
+caught them.
+
+Just on the edge of the deep, opposite window-frame, clung one
+vivid, separate flash of perfect azure, all alone, and farthest off
+of all.
+
+Desire wondered, at first glance, how it should happen till she saw,
+against a closet-door ajar, a gibbous sphere of red and golden
+flame. Yards apart the points were, and a shadow lay between; but
+the one sure sunbeam knew no distance, and there was no radiant line
+of the spectrum lost.
+
+Desire remembered her old comparison of complementary colors: "to
+see blue, and to live red," she had said, complaining.
+
+But now she thought,--"Foreshortening! In so many things, that is
+all,--if we could only see as the Sun sees!"
+
+One bit of our living, by itself, all one deep, burning, bleeding
+color, maybe; but the globe is white,--the blue is somewhere. And,
+lo! a soft, still motion; a little of the flame-tint has dropped
+off; it has leaped to join itself to the blue; it gives itself over;
+and they are beautiful together,--they fulfill each other; yet, in
+the changing never a thread falls quite away into the dark. Why, it
+is like love joining itself to love again!
+
+As God's sun climbs the horizon, His steadfast, gracious purpose,
+striking into earthly conditions, seems to break, and scatter, and
+divide. Half our heart is here, half there; our need and ache are
+severed from their help and answer; the tender blue waits far off
+for the eager, asking red; yet just as surely as His light shines
+on, and our life moves under it, so surely, across whatever gulf,
+the beauty shall all be one again; so surely does it even now move
+all together, perfect and close always under His eye, who never
+sends a _half_ ray anywhere.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She read her little poem,--sent to her; she read it through. She
+rose up glad and strong; her room was full of glorious sunshine now;
+the broken bits of color were all taken up in one full pouring of
+the day.
+
+She went down with the light of it in her heart, and all about her.
+
+Uncle Oldways met her at the foot of the wide staircase. "Good-day,
+child!" he said to her in his quaint fashion. "Why it _is_ good day!
+Your face shines."
+
+"You have given me a beautiful east window, uncle," said Desire,
+"and the morning has come in!"
+
+And from the second step, where she still stood, she bent forward a
+little, put her hands softly upon his shoulders, and for the first
+time, kissed his cheek.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13997 ***