The Other Girls

CHAPTER XII.

LETTERS AND LINKS.

That same September morning, Miss Euphrasia, sitting in her pretty corner room at Mrs. Georgeson's,—just returned to her city life from the rest and sweetness of a country summer,—had letters brought to her door.

The first was in a thin, strong, blue envelope, with London and Liverpool postmarks, and "per Steamer Calabria," written up in the corner, business-wise, with the date, and a dash underneath. This she opened first, for the English postmarks, associated with that handwriting, gave her a sudden thrill of bewildered surprise:—

With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended.

Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-glass. Do you think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure, gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of God's own words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of falseness?

If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had gone daily about her Lord's business, thinking of that first; not stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her; fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight, beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her face in the glass, and to guess what he would think of it.

She saw a picture like this:—

Soft, large eyes, with no world-harass in them; little curves imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown; there was plenty of it still; it had kept so much of the gold that it was now like a tender mist through which the light flashes and smiles. Of all color-changes, this is the rarest.

Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of perfect teeth.

"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up and looked prettier yet.

"Why, I will not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had half forgotten:—

Miss Kirkbright had not read this straight through without a pause. Two or three times she had let her hands drop to her lap with the letter in them, and sat thinking. When she came to what Sylvie said about her "laughing to know how she had been saving," Miss Euphrasia stopped, not to laugh, but to wipe tears from her eyes.

"The poor, dear, brave little soul!" she said to herself. "And that blessed Mrs. Jeffords,—to let her think she is earning her board with ironing sheets, perhaps, and washing dishes! Km!"

That last unspellable sound was a half choke and half chuckle, that Miss Euphrasia surprised herself in making out of the sudden, mixed impulse to sob, and laugh, and to catch somebody in her arms and kiss that wasn't there.

"If I were an angel, I suppose I could wait," she went on saying to herself after that. "But even for them, it must be hard work some times. And so,—how the great Reasons Why flash upon one out of one's own little experience!—of that wonderful, blessed Day, when all shall be made right, the angels in heaven know not, neither the Son, but the Father only! The Lord cannot even trust the pure human that is in Himself to dwell, separately, upon that End which is to be, but may not be yet!"

I do not suppose anything whatever could come into Miss Euphrasia's life, or touch her with its circumstance, that she did not straightway read in it the wider truth beyond the letter. She was a Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by the living gift itself. Her insight was no separate thing, taken up and used now and then, of a purpose. It was as different from that as eyes are from spectacles. She could not help her little sermons. They preached themselves to her and in her, continually. So, if we go along with her, we must take her with her interpretations. Some friend said of her once, that she was a life with marginal notes; and the notes were the larger part of it.

But Miss Euphrasia found a postscript, presently, to Sylvie's letter, written hurriedly on the other side of the last leaf; as if she had made haste, before she should lose courage and change her mind about saying it:—

"Do you think it would be possible to find any sort of place in Boston where I could do something to help pay, this winter,—and will you try for me? I could sew, or do little things about a house, or read or write for somebody. I could help in a nursery, or teach, some hours in a day,—hours when mother likes to be quiet; and she would not know."

This was essential. "Mother must not know."

The finding of this postscript drove out of Miss Euphrasia's mind another thought that had suddenly come into it as she turned the letter over in her fingers. It was some minutes before she went back to it; minutes in which she was quite absorbed with simple suggestions and peradventures in Sylvie's behalf.

But—"Brickfield Farms? Sandon? Josephus Browne." When had she heard those names before? What hopeless piece of property was it she had heard her brother-in-law speak of long ago,—somewhere down East,—where there were old kilns and clay-pits? Something that had come into or passed through his hands for a debt?

"There is a great tangling of links here. What are they shaken into my fingers for, I wonder? What is there here to be tied, or to be unraveled?"

For she believed firmly, always, that things did not happen in a jumble, however jumbled they might seem. Though she could scarcely keep two thoughts together of the many crowded ones that had come to her, one upon another, this strange morning, she was sure the Lord knew all about it, and that He had not sent them upon her in any real confusion. She knew that there was no precipitance—no inconsequence—with Him.

"They are threads picked out for some work that He will do," she said, as she tucked her brother's letter into a low, broad basket beside the white and rose and violet wools with which she was at odd minutes crocheting a dainty footspread for an invalid friend, and put the other in her pocket.

"Now I will tie my bonnet on, and go, as I had meant, to see Desire. That, also, is a piece of this same morning."

Miss Kirkbright, likewise, watched and learned a story that told and repeated itself as it went along, of a House that was building bit by bit, and of life that lay about it. Only hers was the house the Lord builds; and the stories of it, and all the sentences of the story, were the things He daily puts together.

CHAPTER XIII.

RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE.

Desire was out. She had gone down to Neighbor Street, to see Luclarion Grapp.

Luclarion had a Home there now; a place where girls and women came and went, and always found a rest and a welcome, to stay a night, or a week, or as long as they needed, provided only, that they entered into the work and spirit of the house while they did stay.

Luclarion still sold her good, cheap white loaves and brown, her muffins and her crumpets; and she had what she called her "big baking room," where a dozen women could work at the troughs and the kneaders and the ovens; and in this bakery they learned an honest trade that would stand them in stead for self-support, whether to furnish a commodity for sale, or in homes where daily bread must be put together as well as prayed for.

"You can do something now that all the world wants done; that's as good as a gold mine, and ever so much better," said Luclarion Grapp.

Then she had a laundry. From letting her lodgers wash and iron for themselves, to put their scanty wardrobes into the best condition and repair, she went on to showing them nice work and taking it in for them to do; until now there were some dozen families who sent her weakly washing, three to five dollars' worth each; and for ten months in the year a hundred and eighty dollars were her average receipts.

Down at "The Neighbors,"—as from the name of the street and the spirit and growth of the thing it had come to be called,—they had "Evenings;" when friends of the place came in and made it pleasant; brought books and pictures, flowers and fruit, and made a little treat of it for mind and heart and body. It was some plan for one of these that had taken Desire and Hazel to Miss Grapp's to-day.

Miss Euphrasia's first feeling was disappointment. It seemed as if her morning were going a wee wrong after all. But her second thought—that it was surely all in the day's work, and had happened so by no mistake—took her in, with a cheery and really expectant face, to Rachel Froke's gray parlor, to "sit her down a five minutes, and rest." She confidently looked for her business then to be declared to her, since the business she thought she had come upon was set aside.

"I have had a great mind to come to thee," were the first words Rachel said, as her visitor seated herself in the low chair, twin to her own, which she kept for friends. Rachel Froke liked her own; but she never felt any special comfort comfortably her own, until she could hold it thus duplicated.

"I have wanted for a little while past to talk to some one, and Hapsie Craydocke would not do. Everything she knows shines so quickly out of those small kind eyes of hers. Hapsie would have looked at me in an unspeakable way, and told it all out too soon. I have a secret, Euphrasia, and it troubleth me; yet not very much for myself; and I know it need not trouble me for anything. I have a reason that may make me leave this place,—for a time at least; and I am sorry for Desire, for she will miss me. Frendely can do all that I do, and she hath the same wish for everything at heart; but then who would help Frendely? She could not get on alone for thee knows the house is large, and Desire is always very busy, with work that should not be hindered. Can thee think of any way? I cannot bear that any uncertain, trustless person should come in here. There hath never been a common servant in this house. Doesn't thee think the Lord hath some one ready since He makes my place empty? And how shall we go rightly to find out?"

"Tell me first, Rachel, of your own matter. Is it any trouble,—any grief or pain?"

Rachel had quite forgot. The real trouble of it was this perplexity that she had told. The rest of it—that she knew was all right. She would not call it trouble—that which she simply had to wait and bear; but that in which she had to do, and knew not just how to "go rightly about,"—it was that she felt as the disquiet.

She smiled, and laid her hand upon her breast.

"The doctor calls it trouble—trouble here. But it may be helped; and there is a man in Philadelphia who treats such ailments with great skill. My cousin-in-law, Lydia Froke, will receive me at her house for this winter, if I will come and try what he can do. Thee sees: I suppose I ought to go."

"And Desire knows nothing?"

"How could I tell the child, until I saw my way? Now, can thee think?"

Rachel Froke repeated her simple question with an earnestness as if nothing were between them at this moment but the one thing to care for and provide. She waited for no word of personal pity or sympathy to come first. She had grown quite used to this fact that she had faced for herself, and scarcely remembered that it must be a pain to Miss Kirkbright for her sake to hear it.

It was hard even for Miss Kirkbright to feel it at once as a fact, looking in the fair, placid, smiling face that spoke of neither complaint nor pain nor fear; though a thrill had gone through her at the first word and gesture which conveyed the terrible perception, and had made her pale and grave.

"Must it be a servant to do mere servant's work; or could some nice young person, under Frendely's direction, relieve her of the actual care that you have taken, and keep things in the kitchen as they are?"

"That is precisely the best thing, if we could be sure," said Rachel.

"Then I think perhaps I came here with an errand straight to you, though I had no knowledge of it in coming," said Miss Kirkbright.

"That looks like the Lord's leading," said Rachel Froke. "There is always some sign to believe by."

Miss Euphrasia took out Sylvie's letter, as the best way of telling the story, and put it into Rachel Froke's hand. She did not feel it any breach of confidence to do so. Breach of confidence is letting strange air in upon a tender matter. The self-same atmosphere, the self-same temperature,—these do not harm or change anything. It is only widening graciously that which the confidence came for, to let it touch a heart tuned to the celestial key, ready with the same response of understanding. There are friends one can trust with one's self so; sure that only by true and inward channels the word, the thought, shall pass. Gossip—betrayal—sends from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth; tosses about our sacredness, or the misinterpreted sign of it, on the careless surface. From heart to heart it may be given without disloyalty. That is the way God Himself works round for us.

"It is very clear to me," said Rachel Froke, folding up the sheets of the letter, and putting them back into their envelope. "Shall Desire read this?"

"I think so. It would not be a real thing, unless she understood."

So Desire had the letter to read that day when she came home; and then Rachel Froke told her how it was that she must go away for a while; and Desire went round to Miss Euphrasia's room in the twilight, and gave her back her letter, and talked it all over with her; and they two next day explained the most of it to Hazel. It was not needful that she should know the very whole about Rachel or the Argenters; only enough was said to make plain the real companionship that was coming, and the mutual help that it might be; enough of the story to make Hazel cry out joyfully,—"Why, Desire! Miss Kirkbright! She's another! She belongs!" And then, without such drawback of sadness as the other two had had to feel, she caught them each by a hand, and danced them up and down a little dance before the fire upon the hearth-rug—singing,—

CHAPTER XIV.

MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL.

It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister.

It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned.

"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for this life. He hoped there was something afterwards for them that could get to it, but he didn't know."

"Aren't you glad of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a pleasant day, even,—or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning? Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world, now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well, that's what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He never means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune. What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch. Don't mind the strain; believe in the note, every time his finger touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day, that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for."

The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began to be according to the life.

"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him; or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find out. If ever we do get it,—complete"—

"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo.

Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of heaven.

They would all have a first sight of him to-day,—his first Sunday among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs, all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the church above,—they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face, voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left, face to face, and hand to hand,—the Gospel appointed for that day.

"What a crowd there'll be in heaven about some people!" said a tall, good-looking man to Hilary Vireo, in an undertone, as he came up the sidewalk with him into the edge of these waiting groups.

"May be. There'll be some scattering, I fancy, that we don't look for. We shall find all our centres there," returned Mr. Vireo, hastily, as his people closed about him and the hand-shaking began.

Christopher Kirkbright made his way to the stairs, as the passage on one side became cleared by the drifting of the parish over to the western door, by which the minister was entering. A little way up he found his sister, sitting with a young woman in the deep window ledge at the turn, whence they could look quietly down and watch the scene. Overhead, the heavy bell swung out slow, intermitted peals, that thrilled down through all the timbers of the building, and forth upon the crisp autumn air.

"My brother—Miss Ledwith," said Miss Euphrasia, introducing them.

Desire Ledwith looked up, The intensity that was in her gray eyes turned full into Christopher Kirkbright's own. It was like the sudden shifting of a lens through which sun-rays were pouring. She had been so absorbed with watching and thinking, that her face had grown keen and earnest without her knowing, as it had been always wont to do; only it was different from the old way in this,—that while the other had been eager, asking, unsatisfied, this was simply deep, intent; a searching outward, that was answered and fed simultaneously from within and behind; it was the transmitted light by which the face of Moses shone, standing between the Lord and the people.

She was not beautiful now, any more than she had been as a very young girl, when we first knew her; in feature, that is, and with mere outward grace; but her earnestness had so shaped for itself, with its continual, unthwarted flow, a natural and harmonious outlet in brow and eyes; in every curve by which the face conforms itself to that which genuinely animates it, that hers was now a countenance truly radiant of life, hope, purpose. The small, thin, clear cut nose,—the lip corners dropped with untutored simplicity into a rest and decision that were better than sparkle and smile,—the coolness, the strength, that lay in the very tint and tone of her complexion,—these were all details of character that had asserted itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of the cheeks, making an artistic harmony with them.

It was not a face, so much as a living soul, that turned itself toward Miss Euphrasia's brother, as Miss Kirkbright spoke his name and Desire's.

For some reason, he found himself walking into the church beside them afterward, thinking oddly of the etymology of that word,—"introduced."

"Brought within; behind the barriers; made really known. Effie gave me a glimpse of that girl,—her self. I don't think I was ever so really introduced before."

He did not know at all who Miss Ledwith was; she might have been one of the chapel protégées; from Hanover or Neighbor Street, or where not; they all looked nice, in their Sunday dress; those who were helped to dress were made to look as nice as anybody.

Desire Ledwith had on a dark maroon-colored serge, made very simply; bordered, I believe, with just a little roll binding of velvet around the upper skirt. Any shop-girl might have worn that; any shop-girl would perhaps have been scarcely satisfied to wear the plain black hat, with just one curly tip of ostrich feather tucked in where the velvet band was folded together around it.

Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of their home-place weekly, at her side.

Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home with him across the Atlantic.

There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close beside; and all the people felt at least that he felt it, and that therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father. That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the Will."

He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life.

"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence of the Lord. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth; but the Lord spoke unto Adam; the Lord appeared unto Abraham; the Lord was the God of Israel.

"God is our Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our sins,—to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful and very far off."

The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave them,—their way lying down the hill.

"I liked your doctrine of the Lord," said Miss Euphrasia to the minister. "That is true New Church interpretation, as I receive it."

"How can any one help seeing it? It shines so through the whole," said Desire.

"Leader and Giver; it is the one revelation of Scripture, from beginning to end," said Mr. Vireo. "'Come forth into the land that I shall show thee.' 'Follow Me, and I will give unto you everlasting life.' The same call in the Old Testament and in the New."

"'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia.

"Leading—by the hand; giving—morsel by morsel," said Mr. Kirkbright, emphasizing the near and dear detail.

"That makes me think," said Miss Euphrasia, suddenly. "Desire," she went on, without explaining why, "we are going up to Brickfield Farms next week, Christopher and I. Why shouldn't you go too,—and bring her home, you know?"

As true as she lived, Miss Euphrasia hadn't a thought—whatever you may think—of this and that, or anything, when she said it.

Except the simple fact, that it was beautiful October weather, and that she should like it, and that Sylvie and Desire would get acquainted.

"It will do you good. You'd better," said Mr. Vireo, kindly.

Christopher Kirkbright said nothing, of course. There was nothing for him to say. He did not think very much. He only had a passing feeling that it would be pleasant to see this grave-faced girl again, and to understand her, perhaps, a little.

CHAPTER XV.

BONNY BOWLS.

The great show house at Pomantic was almost finished. The architect's and builder's cares were over. There was a stained glass window to go in upon the high second landing of the splendid carved oak staircase, through which gold and rose and purple light should pour down upon the panels of the soft-tinted walls and the rich inlaying of the floors. There was a little polishing of walnut work and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs, remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer.

Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful skill of his contractor. He was proud of his elegant mansion, and fancied that it expressed himself, and the glory that his life had grown to.

Frank Sunderline knew that it expressed him-self; for he had put himself—his hope, his ambition, his sense of right and fitness—into every stroke and line. Now that it was done, it was more his than the man's who paid the bills,—"out of his waistcoat pocket," as he exultingly said to his wife. The designer and the builder had paid for it out of brain and heart and will, and were the real men who had got a new creation and possession of their own, though they should turn their backs upon their finished labor, and never go within the walls again.

It was a kind of a Sunday feeling with which Frank Sunderline was glad, though it was the middle of the week. The sense of accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is the very feeling in which God Himself rested; and out of his own joy, bade all his sons rest likewise in their turn, every time that they should end a six days' toil.

Frank Sunderline had been in Boston all the afternoon, making up accounts and papers with his employer. He came round to Pilgrim Street to tea.

He had got into a way of coming in to tell the Ingrahams the story of his work as it went on, at the same time that he continued his friendly relation with their own affairs, as always ready to do any little turn for them in which a man could be of service. This Sunday rest of his,—though a busier day had not gone over his head since the week began,—must be shared and crowned by them.

There is no subtler test of an unspoken—perhaps an unexamined—relation of a man with his women friends, than this instinctive turning with his Sabbath content and rest to the companionship he feels himself most moved to when it is in his heart. All custom, however homely, grows out of some reality, more than out of any mere convenience; this is why the Sunday coming of the country lover means so much more than his common comings, and sets an established seal upon them all.

Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and servants going in and fastening the doors upon them.

He would make a treat of it,—a holiday,—if she would go; he would come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go with him in the cars and be stared at.

He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end.

He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something of the same perception that would come to her,—if she cared for this asking of his,—came to him with the sudden suggestion that it was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has done any real living at all.

Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow; and he thought she would go.

He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her look so different from other girls, and yet so nice?

"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things."

Ray colored.

"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons."

It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every day,—cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a "snarl."

"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into. It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means tied up. They can't see to their girls; they grow helplesser all the time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a down-stairs to every house, and no home anywhere. That's how it is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it. Why, the help has to get into their humpty-dumpties by three or four o'clock, and see their company. If there's sickness or anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were afraid of sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left to depend on but hotels and hospitals. Home is too big a worry. And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it. It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago."

Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,—as the Scotch grow more Scotch,—with warming up to the subject.

Sunderline laughed.

"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!"

He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at her sewing.

"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you ride out with me to Pomantic?"

Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers' ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs. Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not, perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have him blamed; for what business had she, after all,—

"Well, Ray?"

She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder; she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that "Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it seem like "anything."

"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank you, Frank."

Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another word or look. She never stopped sewing, either.

Well,—he did not see those ten stitches! He might not have been the wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work.

But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot were by.

That next day was made for them.

Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the difference?

I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question of rain and shine,—with need, and asking, and giving.

Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme, because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in God's laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm, or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not the prayer provided for? It was answered a million of years beforehand, in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for help or for forgiveness was anticipated; provision was made for the undoing or the counteracting of the evil,—the healing of the wrong,—just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its foresight.

So, under the dear Law,—which is Love, and cares for the sparrow,—came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament, its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and they two went forth in it.

They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later, to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything.

Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the basement window with a long breath, as they drove off.

"Well, I suppose that's settled," she said, with the mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to be otherwise, inflecting her voice.

"I don't believe Ray thinks so," said Dot.

In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the sturdy mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon. But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy's common sense, and she left no lee-way for uninitiation.

"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round sharply, "that Ray don't suppose,—or don't want,—or don't intend—? She's a goose if she don't, then; and they're both geese; and I shouldn't have any patience with 'em! And that's my mind about it!"

It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions. But no drive out of Boston is destitute of beauty; and even the long turnpike stretches—they are turnpike stretches still, though the Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban residences—have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea.

Ray enjoyed every bit of it,—even the rows of new tenements with their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover him up.

The rhyme itself came into Ray's head, and she said it to her companion.