There were paragraphs in the papers; there were resolutions at meetings of the Board of Trade, and of the Directors of the Trimountain Bank; there was a funeral from the "late residence," largely attended; there were letters and calls of condolence; there was making of crape and bombazine and silk into "mourning;" there were friends and neighbors asking each other, after mention of the sad suddenness, "how it would be;" "how much he had left;" "was there a will?"

And there was a will; made three years before. One hundred thousand dollars, outright, to Increase M. Argenter's beloved wife; also the use of the homestead; fifty thousand dollars to his daughter Sylvia on her reaching the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage; all else to be Mrs. Argenter's for her life-time, reverting afterward to Sylvia or her heirs.

There was just time for this to be ascertained and told of; just time for Sylvie to be named as an heiress, and then all at once something else came to light and was told of.

There was a mining speculation out in Colorado; there was Mr. Argenter's signature for heavy security; there were memoranda of good safe stocks that had stood in his name a little while ago, and no certificates; there had been sales and sacrifices; going in deeper and to more certain loss, because of risk and danger already run.

Mr. Sherrett, senior, came home to dinner one day with news from the street.

"I've been very sorry to hear this morning that Argenter left things in a bad way, after all. There won't be much of anything forthcoming. All swallowed up in mines and lands that have gone under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment that have got into life."

"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," said the quiet voice of Aunt Euphrasia. "How strange it is that men have never interpreted yet!"

"Ah, well! I'm not sure about sins and judgments. I don't undertake to blame," said Mr. Sherrett. "People are born into a whirl, nowadays,—the mass of them. How can they help it?"

"I don't know. But we begin to see how true the words were, and in what pity they must have been spoken," said Aunt Euphrasia. "Tremendous physical forces have been grasped and set to work for mere material ends. Spiritual uses and living haven't kept pace. And so there is a terrible unbalance, and the tower falls upon men's heads."

"Well, poor Argenter wasn't a sinner above all that dwelt in Jerusalem. And now, there are his wife and daughter. I'm sorry for them. They'll find it a hard time."

"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and—be broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to powder.

"How will it be with them?" she asked.

"Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out the will?"

Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened with his whole face, but he had kept silence until now.

Amy had looked up also; startled by the news, and waiting to hear more. The young people were both too really interested, from their intimate knowledge of the first misfortune, to reply with any common "Is it possible?" to this.

"The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent 'might have been,'" said Mr. Sherrett. "There may be something secured; there ought to be. Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe. Otherwise, as such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than nothing."

"What will they do?" The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again. "Can't somebody help them? There is so much money in the world."

"Yes, Effie. And there is gold in the mines. And there are plenty of kind affections in the world, too; but there's loneliness and broken heartedness, for all that. The difficulty always is to bring things together."

"I suppose that is just what people were made for."

"It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves. The hardest kind of cases."

"It's an awful spill-out, this time," Rodney said to Amy, as she followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner was over. "And no mistake!"

Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match, and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in a way they were not often used to.

"Will they have to go away?" asked Amy.

"Out of that house? Of course. They'll be just tipped out of everything."

"How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!"

"She won't stand round lamenting. I've seen her tipped out before. Amy, I'll tell you what; you ought to stick by. Maybe she won't want you, at first; but you ought to do it. Father,"—as Mr. Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining chair,—"you'll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?"

"Why, yes, if I could be of any service. But one wouldn't like to intrude. There are executors to the will. I don't know that it is quite my place."

"I don't believe there will be much intruding—of your sort. And the executors have got nothing to do now. Who are they?"

"Jobling and Cardwell, I believe. Men down town. Perhaps she might like to see a neighbor. Yes, I think I will go. You can drive me round, Rodney, some evening soon. Whom has she, of her own people, I wonder?"

"Only her sister, Mrs. Lowndes, you know. The brother-in-law isn't much, I imagine."

"Stephen A. Lowndes? No. Broken-down and out of the world. He couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been holding him up."

"I think they'll be very glad to see you, sir."

Rodney drove his father over the next night. Mr. Sherrett went in alone. Rodney sat in the chaise outside.

Mr. Sherrett waited some minutes after he had sent up his card, and then Sylvie came down to him, looking pale in her black dress, and with the trouble really in her young eyes, over which the brows bent with a strange heaviness.

"I could not persuade mother to come down," she said. "She does not feel able to see anybody. But I wanted to thank you for coming, Mr. Sherrett."

"I thought an old neighbor might venture to ask if he could be of use. A lady needs some one to talk things over with. I know your mother must have much to think of, and she cannot have been used to business. I should not come for a mere call at such a time. I should be glad to be of some service."

"Would you be kind enough to sit down a few minutes and talk with me, Mr. Sherrett?"

There was a difference already between the Sylvie of to-day and the Sylvie of a few weeks ago. It was no longer a question of little nothings,—of how she should get people in and how she could get them out,—of what she should do and say to seem "nice all through," like Amy Sherrett. Mr. Sherrett had not come for a "mere call," as he said; and there was no mere "receiving." The llama lace and the gray silk and the small savoir faire could not help her now. Mrs. Argenter was up-stairs in a black tamise wrapper with a large plain black shawl folded about her, as she lay in the chill of a suddenly cool August evening, on the sofa in her dressing-room, which for the last week or two she had rarely left. All at once, Sylvie found that she must think and speak both for her mother and herself.

Mrs. Argenter could run smoothly in one polished groove; she was thrown out now, and to her the whole world was off its axis. Her House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in. She had been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her life that was building, it might stand there the very threshold over which she should pass into perfect shelter of content.

"Mother has been entirely bewildered by all this trouble," said Sylvie, quietly, to Mr. Sherrett. "I don't think she really understands. She has lived so long with things as they are, that she cannot imagine them different. I think it is easier with me, because, you know, I haven't been used to anything such a very long while."

Sylvie even smiled a tremulous little smile as she said this; and Mr. Sherrett looked at her with one upon his own face that had as much pitiful tenderness in it as could have shown through tears.

"You see we shall have to do something right off,—go somewhere; and mother can't change the least thing. She can't spare Sabina, who has heard of a good place, and must go soon at any rate, because nobody else would know where things belonged or are put away, or fetch her anything she wanted. And the very things, I suppose, don't belong to us. How shall we break through and begin again?" Sylvie looked up earnestly at Mr. Sherrett, asking this question. This was what she really wanted to know.

"You will remove, I suppose?" said Mr. Sherrett "If you could hear of a house,—if you could propose something definite,—if you and Sabina could begin to pack up,—how would that be?"

He met her inquiry with primary, practical suggestions, just what she needed, wasting no words. He saw it was the best service he could do this little girl who had suddenly become the real head of the household.

"I have thought, and thought," said Sylvie; "and after all, mother must decide. Perhaps she wouldn't want to keep house. I don't know whether we could. She spoke once about boarding. But boarding costs a great deal, doesn't it?"

"To live as you would need to,—yes."

"I should hate to have to manage small, and change round, in boarding. I know some people who live so. It would give me a very mean feeling. It would be like trying to get a bite of everybody's bread and butter. I'd rather have my own little loaf."

"You are a brave, true little woman," said Mr. Sherrett, warmly. "All you want is to be set in the right direction, and see your way. You'll be sure to go on."

"I think I should. If mother can only be contented. I think I should rather like it. I could understand living better. There would only be a little at a time. A great deal, and a great many things, make it a puzzle."

"Have you any knowledge about the property?"

"Mr. Cardwell has been here two or three times. He says there are twelve thousand dollars secured to mother by a note and mortgage on this place. It was money of hers that was put into it. We shall have the income of that; and there might be things, perhaps, that we should have the right to sell, or keep to furnish with. Seven and a half per cent, on twelve thousand dollars would be nine hundred dollars a year. If we had to pay sixteen dollars a week to board, it would take eight hundred and thirty-two; almost the whole of it. But perhaps we could find a place for less; and our clothes would last a good while, I suppose."

Sylvie went through her little calculation, just as she had made it over and over before, all by herself; she did not stop to think that she was doing the small sum now for the enlightenment of the great Mr. Sherrett, who calculated in millions for himself and others, every day.

"You would hardly be comfortable in a house which you could rent for less than—say, four hundred dollars, and that would leave very little for your living. Perhaps I should advise you to board."

"But we could do things, maybe, if we lived by ourselves, amongst other people in small houses. We can't be two things, Mr. Sherrett, rich and poor; and it seems to me that is what we should be trying for, if we got into a boarding-house. We should have to be idle and ashamed. I want to take right hold. I'd like to earn something and make it do."

Sylvie's eyes really shone. The spirit that had worked in her as a little child, to make her think it would be nice to be a "kitchen girl, and have a few things in boxes, and Sundays out," threw a charm of independence and enterprise and cosy thrift over her changed position, and the chance it gave her. Mr. Sherrett wondered at the child, and admired her very much.

"Could you teach something? Could you keep a little school?"

"I've thought about it. But a person must know ever to much, nowadays, to keep even the least little school. They want Kindergartens, and all the new plans, that I haven't learnt. And it's just so about music. You must be scientific; and all I really know is a few little songs. But I can dance well, Mr. Sherrett. I could teach that."

There was something pathetically amusing in this bringing to market of her one exquisite accomplishment, learned for pleasure, and the suggestion of it at this moment, as she sat in her strange black dress, with the pale, worn look on her face, in the home so shadowed by heavy trouble, and about to pass away from their possession.

"You will be sure to do something, I see," said Mr. Sherrett. "Yes, I think you had better have a quiet little home. It will be a centre to work from, and something to work for. You can easily furnish it from this house. Whatever has to be done, you could certainly be allowed such things as you might make a schedule of. Would you like me to talk for you with Mr. Cardwell, and have something arranged?"

"O, if you would! Mother dreads the very sound of Mr. Cardwell's name, and the thought of business. She cannot bear it now. But your advice would be so different!"

Sylvie knew that it would go far with Mrs. Argenter that Mr. Howland Sherrett, in the relation of neighbor and friend, should plan and suggest for them, rather than Mr. Richard Cardwell, a stranger and mere man of business, should come and tell them things that must be.

"I'm afraid you'll think I don't realize things, I've planned and imagined so much," Sylvie began again, "but I couldn't help thinking. It is all I have had to do. There's a little house in Upper Dorbury that always seemed to me so pretty and pleasant; and nobody lives there now. At least, it was all shut up the last time I drove by. The house with the corner piazza and the green side yard, and the dark red roof sloping down, just off the road in the shady turn beside the bank that only leads to two other little houses beyond. Do you know?"

Mr. Sherrett did know. They were three houses built by members of the same family, some years ago, upon an old village homestead property. Two of them had passed into other hands; one—this one—remained in its original ownership, but had been rented of late; since the war, in which the proprietor had made money, and with it had bought a city residence in Chester Park.

"You see we must go where things will be convenient. We can't ride round after them any more. And we could get a girl up there, as other people do, for general housework. I'm afraid mother wouldn't quite like being in the village, but of course there can't be anything that she would quite like, now. And we aren't really separate people any longer; at least, we don't belong to the separate kind of people, and I couldn't bear to be lonesomely separate. It's good to belong to some kind of people; isn't it?"

"I think it is very good to belong to your kind, where-ever they are, Miss Sylvie. Tell your mother I say she may be glad of her daughter. I'll find out about the house for you, at any rate. And I'll see Mr. Cardwell; and I'll call again. Good-night, my dear. God bless you!"

And the grand Mr. Howland Sherrett pressed Sylvie Argenter's hand in both of his, as a father might have pressed it, and went out with the feeling of a warm rush from his heart toward his eyes.

"That's a girl like a—whatever there is that means the noblest sort of woman, and I'm not sure it is a queen!" he said to Rodney, as he seated himself in the chaise, and took the reins from his son's hands.

Mr. Sherrett was apt to say to Rodney, "You may drive me to this or that place," but he was very apt, also, to do the driving himself, after all; especially if he was somewhat preoccupied, and forgot, as he did now.

The way Mr. Howland Sherrett inquired about the red-roofed house, was this:

He went down to Mr. John Horner's store, in Opal Street, and asked him what was the rent of it.

"Six hundred and fifty dollars."

"Rather high, isn't it, for the situation?"

"Not for the situation of the land, I guess," said Mr. Horner. "I'm paying annexation taxes."

"What will you sell the property for as it stands?"

"Eighty-five hundred dollars."

"I'll give you eight thousand, Mr. Horner, in cash, upon condition that you will not mention its having changed hands. I have some friends whom I wish should live there," he added, lest some deep speculating move should be surmised.

Mr. Horner thought for the space of thirty seconds, after the rapid, Opal Street fashion, and said,—

"You may have it. When will you take the deed?"

"To-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock. Will that be convenient?"

"All right. Yes, sir."

And the next morning at eleven o'clock, the two gentlemen exchanged papers; Mr. Horner received a check on the First National Bank for eight thousand dollars, and Mr. Sherrett the title-deed to house and land on North Centre Street, Dorbury, known as part of the John Horner estate, and bordering so and so, and so on.

The same afternoon, Mr. Sherrett called at Mrs. Argenter's, and told her of the quiet, pleasant, retired, yet central house and garden in Upper Dorbury, which he found she could have on a lease of two or three years, for a rent of three hundred and fifty dollars. It was in the hands of a lawyer in the village, who would make out the lease and receive the payments. He had inquired it out, and would conclude the arrangements for her, if she desired.

"I don't know that I desire anything, Mr. Sherrett. I suppose I must do what I can, since it seems I am not to be left in my own home which I put my own money into. If it appears suitable to you, I have no doubt it is right. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure. Sylvie knows the house, and has an idea she likes it. She is childish, and likes changing. She will have enough of it, I am afraid."

She did not even care to go over and inspect the house. Sylvie was glad of that, for she knew it could be made to seem more homelike, if she and Sabina could get the parlor and her mother's rooms ready before Mrs. Argenter saw it. During the removal, it was settled that they should go and stay with Mrs. Lowndes, at River Point. This practically resulted in Mrs. Argenter's remaining with her sister, while Sylvie and Sabina spent their time, night as well as day, often, between Argenter Place and the new house.

Rodney Sherrett rode through the village one day, when they were busy there with their arrangements.

Sylvie stood on a high flight of steps in the bay-window, putting up some white muslin curtains, with little frills on the edges. They had been in a sleeping-room at Argenter Place. All the furniture of the house had been appraised, and an allowance made of two thousand dollars, to which amount Mrs. Argenter might reserve such articles as she wished, at the valuation. So much, and two thousand dollars in cash, were given her in exchange for her homestead and her right of dower in the unincumbered portion of the estate, upon which was one other smaller mortgage. No other real property appeared in the list of assets. Mr. Argenter had, unfortunately, invested almost wholly in bonds, stocks, and those last ruinous mining ventures. The land out in Colorado was useless, and besides, being wild land, did not come under the law of dower.

Mrs. Argenter thought it was all very strange, especially that a sum of money,—eighteen hundred dollars, which was in her husband's desk, the proceeds of some little mortgage that he had just sold,—was not hers to keep. She came very near stealing it from the estate, quietly appropriating it, without meaning to be dishonest; regarding it as simply money in the house, which her husband "would have given her, if she had wanted it, the very day before he died."

Possibly he might; but the day after he died, it was no longer his nor hers.

To go back to Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into the "shady turn."

The front door was open, and boxes stood in the passage; he walked in as far as the parlor door; then he tapped with his riding-whip against the frame of it. Sylvie started on her perch, and began to come down.

"Don't stop. I couldn't help coming in, seeing you as I went by," said Rodney.

Sylvie sat down on one of the middle steps. She would rather keep still than exhibit herself in any further movement. Rodney ought to have known better than go in then; if indeed he did not know better than Sylvie herself did, how very pretty and graceful she looked, all out of regular and ordinary gear.

She had taken off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought had sobered lately to dove-gray, were deep, brilliant blue again. She was excited with her work, and flushed now with the surprise of Rodney's coming in.

"How pretty you are going to look here," said Rodney, glancing about.

The carpet Sylvie had chosen to keep for the parlor—for though Mrs. Argenter had feebly discussed and ostensibly dictated the list as Sylvie wrote it down, she had really given up all choosing to her with a reiterated, helpless, "As you please," at every question that came up—was a small figured Brussels of a soft, shadowy water-gray, with a border in an arabesque pattern. This had been upon a guest chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and Sylvie's ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance. She only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs.

The window draperies were as I have said; there was a large, plain library table in the middle of the room, with books and baskets and little easels with pictures, and paper weights and folders, and other such like small articles of use and grace and cosy expression lying about upon it, as if people had been there quite a while and grown at home. There were bronze candelabra on the mantel and upon brackets each side the bay window. Pictures were already hung,—portraits, and gifts, not included in the schedule,—a few nice engravings, and one glowing piece of color, by Mrs. Murray, which Sylvie said was like a fire in the room.

"I am only afraid it is too fine," said she, replying to Rodney. "I really want to be like our neighbors,—to be a neighbor. We belong here now. People should not drop out of the world, between the ranks, when changes happen; they can't change out of humanity. Do you know, Mr. Sherrett,—if it wasn't for the thought of my poor father, and my mother not caring about anything any more,—I know I should enjoy the chance of being a village girl?"

"You'll be a village girl, I imagine, as your parlor is a village parlor. All in good faith, but wearing the rue with a difference."

"I don't mean to. I've been thinking,—ever so much, and I've found out a good many things. It's this not falling on to anything that keeps people in the misery of falling. I mean to come to land, right here. I guess I preexisted as a barefoot maiden. There's a kind of homeishness about it, that there never was in being elegant. I wonder if I have got anything in here that has no business?"

"Not a scrap. I've no doubt the blacksmith's wife's parlor is finer. But you can't put the character out."

"I mean to have plants, now; in this bay window. I guess I can, now that we have no conservatory. Village people always have plants in their windows, and mother won't want to see the street staring in."

"Have you brought some?"

"How could I? Those great oranges and daphnes? No: I shall have little window plants and raise them."

"But meanwhile, won't the street be staring in?"

"Well, we can keep the blinds shut, for the warm weather."

"Amy will come and see you, when you are settled; Amy and Aunt Euphrasia; you'll let them, won't you? You don't mean to be such a violent village girl as to cut all your old friends?"

"Old friends?" Sylvie repeated, thoughtfully "Well, it does seem almost old. But I didn't think I knew any of you very well, only a little while ago."

"Until the overturns," said Rodney. "It takes a shaking up, I suppose, sometimes, to set things right. That's what the Shaker people believe has got to be generally. Do you know, the Scotch—Aunt Euphrasia is Scotch—have a way of using the word 'upset' to mean 'set up.' I think that is what you make it mean, Miss Sylvie. I understand the philosophy of it now. I got my first illustration when I tipped you out there at the baker's door."

"You tipped me out into one of the nicest places I ever was in. I've no doubt it was a piece of the preparation. I mean to have Ray Ingraham for my intimate friend."

Rodney Sherrett did not say anything immediately to this. He sat on the low cricket upon which he had placed himself near the door, turning his soft felt hat over and over between his hands. He was not quite ready to perceive as yet, that the baker's daughter was just the person for Sylvie Argenter's intimate friend; and he had a dim suspicion, likewise, that there was something in the girl constitution that prevented the being able to have more than one intimate friend.

He repeated presently his assurance that Amy and Aunt Euphrasia would come over to see them, and took himself off, saying that he knew he must have been horribly in the way all the time.

The next morning, a light covered wagon, driven by Mr. Sherrett's man, Rodgers, came up the Turn. There was nobody at the red-roofed house so early, and he set down in the front porch what he took carefully, one at a time, from the vehicle,—some two dozen lovely greenhouse plants, newly potted from the choicest and most flourishing growth of the season.

When Sylvie and Sabina came round from the ten o'clock street car, they stumbled suddenly upon this beauty that incumbered the entrance. To a branch of glossy green, luxuriant ivy was tied a card,—

"RODNEY SHERRETT, With friendly compliments."

Sylvie really sung at her work to-day, placing and replacing till she had grouped the whole in her wire frames in the bay window so as to show every leaf and spray in light and line aright.

"Why, it is prettier than it ever was at the old place; isn't it Sabina? It's full and perfect; and that was always a great barrenness of glass. The street can't stare in now. I think mother will be able to forget that there is even a street at all."

"It's real nobby," said Sabina.

The room was all soft green and gray: green rep chairs and sofa, green topped library table; green piano cover; green inside blinds; a green velvet grape leaf border around the gray papered walls.

Sabina, though a very elegant housemaid, patronized and approved cheerfully. She was satisfied with the new home. There had not been a word of leaving since it was decided upon. She had her reasons. Sabina was "promised to be married" next spring. Dignity in her profession was not so much of an object meantime, nor even wages; she had laid up money and secured her standing, living always in the first families; she could afford to take it in a quiet way; "it wouldn't be so bothering nor so dressy;" Sabina had a saving turn with her best things, that spared both trouble and money. Besides, her kitchen windows and the back door suited her; they looked across a bit of unoccupied land to the back street where the cabinet-shop buildings were. Sabina was going to marry into the veneering profession.



CHAPTER VI.

A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR.

Mr. Ingraham, the baker, did not die that day when the doctor's chaise stood at the door, and all the children in the village were sent in for brick loaves. He was only struck down helpless; to lie there and be waited on; to linger, and wonder why he lingered; to feel himself in the way, and a burden; to get used to all this, and submit to it, and before he died to see that it had been all right.

The bakery lease had yet two years to run. It might have been sold out, but that would have involved a breaking up and a move, which Ingraham himself was not fit to bear, and his wife and daughters were not willing to think of yet.

Rachel quietly said,—as soon as her father was so far restored and comfortable that he could think and speak of things with them,—

"I can go on with the bakehouse. I know how. The men will all stay. I spoke to them Saturday night."

Ray kept the accounts, and when Saturday night came, the first after the misfortune fell upon them, she called all the journeymen into the little bakery office, where she sat upon the high stool at her father's desk. She gave each his week's wages, asking each one, as he signed his name in receipt, to wait a minute. Then she told them all, that she meant, if her father consented, to keep on with the business.

"He may get well," she said. "Will you all stand by and help me?"

"'Deed and we wull," said Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest, and the stupidest—if a quick heart and a willing will can be stupid—of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly hitched on.

Ray found that she had to go on making brick loaves, however. She must keep her men; she could not expect to train them all to new ways; she must not make radical experiments in this trust-work, done for her father, to hold things as they were for him. Brick loaves, family loaves, rolls, brown bread, crackers, cookies, these had to be made as the journeymen knew how; as bakers' men had made them ever since and before Mother Goose wrote the dear old pat-a-cake rhyme.

Ray wondered why, when everybody liked home bread and home cake,—if they could stop to make them and knew how,—home bread and cake could not be made in big bakehouse ovens also, and by the quantity. She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I will work; I will speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are widening in the very nature and development of things; they are showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business, here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that.

Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East Mills, and River Point.

"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like. She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in to see what was wanting of fresh supplies from the bakehouse.

"I've been expecting you ever since we moved into the Turn. Ain't I to have any neighbors?"

The little court-way behind the Bank had come to be called the Turn; Sylvie took the name as she found it; as it named itself to her also in the first place, before she knew that others called it so. She liked it; it was one of those names that tell just what a thing is; that have made English nomenclature of places, in the old, original land above all, so quaint and full of pleasant home expression.

Dot looked up in surprise. It had never entered her head that the Argenters would expect them to call; and truly, the Argenters, in the plural, were very far indeed from any such imagination.

Ray took it more quietly and coolly.

"We are always very busy, since my father has been sick," she said. "We hardly go to see our old friends. But if you would like it, we will try and come, some day."

"I want you to," said Sylvie. "But I don't want you to call, though I said so. I want you to come right in and see me. I never could bear calls, and I don't mean ever to begin with them again."

The Highfords had come and "called," in the carriage, with pearl-kid gloves and long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it; a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up to her on a tray.

The Ingrahams saw she really meant it, and they came in one evening at first, when they were walking by, and Sylvie sat alone, with a book, in the twilight, on the corner piazza. Her mother had been there; her easy-chair stood beside the open window, but she had gone in and lain down upon the sofa. Mrs. Argenter had drooped, physically, ever since the grief and change. It depends upon what one's life is, and where is the spring of it, and what it feeds upon, how one rallies from a shock of any sort. The ozone had been taken out of her atmosphere. There was nothing in all the sweet sunshine of generous days, or the rest of calm-brooding nights, to restore her, or to belong to her any more. She had nothing to breathe. She had nothing to grow to, or to put herself in rapport with. She was out of relation with all the great, full world.

"Whom did you have there?" she asked Sylvie, when Ray and Dot were gone, and she came in to see if her mother would like anything.

"The Ingrahams, mother; our neighbors, you know; they are nice girls; I like them. And they were very kind to me the day of my accident, you remember. I called first, you see! And besides," she added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I should like them to come."

"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered, listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion.

"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them. All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people."

"You certainly forget the Sherretts."

"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it, and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could."

"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by the roots, and there is the end of it."

It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife, or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs. Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come together; girls of this day, especially, who in all classes get so much more of the same things than their mothers did.

Sylvie, authorized by this feeble acquiescence in what made "no difference," went on with her intention of having Ray Ingraham for her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders; the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds, where all sorts of blooms,—bright petunias and verbenas, delicate sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,—made a glory and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery, against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines.

"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother. "People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a peep at the hills. But you are right down amongst such niceness! There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and because that make it so much better. Somebody came here to do something; and the rest was, and happened, and grew. I can't bear things fixed up to be exquisite!"

"That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven," said a sweet, cheery voice behind them. They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone.

"Being and doing. Then the surrounding is born out of the living. The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory."

"Then you don't think the golden streets are all paved hard, beforehand?" said Sylvie. She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed quickly into her key. She had had talks with her before this, and she liked them.

"No more than that," said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings behind the village buildings. "'New every morning, and fresh every evening.' Doesn't He show us how it is, every day's work that He himself begins and ends?"

"Do you think we shall ever live like that?" asked Ray Ingraham, perceiving.

"'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of their Father,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. "And the shining of the sun makes his worlds around him, doesn't it? We shall create outside of us whatever is in us. We do it now, more than we know. We shall find it all, by and by, ready,—whatever we think we have missed; the building not made with hands."

"I'm afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us," said Dot. Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods to things. She did not do it with intent to be smart, or epigrammatic. She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion.

"'The first last, and the last first.' That is a part of the same thing. The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment. You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole chain after it. Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new thought. It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some fresh phase of what is one and everlasting."

Miss Euphrasia could no more help talking so—given the right circumstances to draw her forth—than she could help breathing. Her whole nature was fluid to the truth, as the atoms she spoke of. Talking with her, you saw, as in a divine kaleidoscope, the gleams and shiftings and combinings of heavenly and internal things; shown in simplest movings and relations of most real and every day experience and incident.

But she never went on—and "went over," exhorting. She did not believe in discourses, she said, even from the pulpit—very much. She believed in a sermon, and letting it go. And a sermon is just a word; as the Word gives itself, in some fresh manna-particle, to any soul.

So when the girls stood silent, as girls will, not knowing how to break a pause that has come upon such speaking, she broke it herself, with a very simple question; a question of mere little business that she had come to ask Dot.

"Were the little under-kerchiefs done?"

It was just the same sweet, cheery tone; she dropped nothing, she took up nothing, turning from the inward to the outside. It was all one quiet, harmonious sense of wholeness; living, and expression of living. That was what made Miss Euphrasia's "words" chord so pleasantly, always, without any jar, upon whatever string was being played; and the impulse and echo of them to run on through the music afterward, as one clear bell-stroke marking an accent, will seem to send its lingering impression through the unaccented measures following.

Dot went into the house and got the things; fine cambric neck-covers, frilled around the throat with delicate lace. She folded them small, and put them in a soft paper. Miss Kirkbright took the parcel, and paid Dot the money for her work; she gave her three dollars. Then she said to Sylvie,—

"Will you walk as far as the car corner with me? I have missed a real call that I meant to have had with you. I have been to your house."

"Did you see mother?" Sylvie asked, as they walked on, having said good-by, and passed out through the shop.

"No: Sabina said she was lying down, and I would not have her disturbed. I came partly to tell you a little news. Amy is engaged to Mr. Robert Truesdaile. They will be married in the fall, and go out to England. He has relatives there; his mother's family. There is an uncle living near Manchester; a large cotton manufacturer; he would like to take his nephew into the business; he has a great desire to get him there and make an Englishman of him."

"Does Amy like it? I mean, going to England? I am ever so glad for her being so happy."

"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn, unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old and tired, which I think there is never any need of doing."

"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a little suggestion from it.

"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these days."

"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I mean,"—she gathered herself up bravely to say,—"I should like dearly to do anything for Amy; but I have thought it would be a good plan—if I could—to do something like that for the sake of earning; as Dot Ingraham does."

"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt.

"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,—which we have to have,—turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages—and mother's wine—and cream—and fresh eggs,—I get so worried when the bills come in!"

Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling her money and housekeeping troubles.

"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just as much as I can do,—of those kinds of work,—and a poor girl would waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much, myself. If Sabina were to go,—and she will next spring,—I am afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two."

For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is wonderful how much work one person, who does none of it and who must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs. Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she never could remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,—she needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it; one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was the shape of her head," Sabina said, in a phrase she had learned of the cabinet-maker.

"You shall have anything you can do; just as Dot does," said Miss Euphrasia. "And Amy will like it all the better for your doing. You can put the love into the work, as much as we shall into the pay."

Was there ever anybody who handled the bare facts of life so graciously as this Miss Euphrasia? She did it by taking right hold of them, by their honest handles,—as they were meant to be taken hold of.

"You like your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They had just missed one car; there would not be another for twenty minutes.

"O, yes. No; I haven't got tired; but I don't feel as if I had quite been it, yet. I don't think I am exactly that, or anything, now. That is the worst of it. People don't understand. They won't take us in,—all of them. It's just as hard to get into a village, if you weren't born in it, as it is to get into upper-ten-dom. Mrs. Knoxwell called, and looked round all the time with her nose up in a sort of a way,—well, it was just like a dog sniffing round for something. And she went off and told about mother's poor, dear, old, black silk dress, that I made into a cool skirt and jacket for her. 'Some folks must be always set up in silk, she sposed.' Everybody isn't like the Ingrahams."

"No garment of this life fits exactly. There was only one seamless robe. But we mustn't take thought for raiment, you see. The body is more. And at last,—somehow, sometime,—we shall be all clothed perfectly—with his righteousness."

This was too swift and light in its spiritual touching and linking for Sylvie to follow. She had to ask, as the disciples did, for a meaning.

"It isn't clothes that I am thinking of, or that trouble me; or any outside. And I know it isn't actual clothes you mean. Please tell me plainer, Miss Euphrasia."

"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not clothes so much as life; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history, circumstance. 'Raiment,'—'garment,'—the words always stand for this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his garment,'—He gave up his own life that He might have been living,—to come and wash our feet!"

"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently.

"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves. And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but rightness?"

"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?"

"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it is things they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly that his 'justifying' is setting everything right for them, and round them, and in them: his rightness is sufficient for them; they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He knows that we have need," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly. "Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as people run for their lives from fire or flood."

Sylvie had listened with a shining face.

"You get it all from that one word,—'raiment.' Your words—the words you find out, Miss Kirkbright—are living things."

"Yes, words are living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit, and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words, inspired. We talk about their being inspired, as if it were a passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand their speech."

"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'—that words in the Bible stand for,—Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?"

"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled.

"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly.

"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the one part to the other part under heaven. Lightening—not lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,—received it, wonderfully; but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass away, but the Word shall never pass away."

"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?"

The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell.

"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could tell it to my mother!"

"Can't you?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,—with me," Sylvie answered, with a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am taking to her. I can take,—but I can't give, and I always feel so that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?"

"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say. Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about such sort of giving—in words—as a duty. Even with people whom I work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that are equal—or similarly related—to the same thing, are related to one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time. Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort."

"I think you go to everything for it—and to everybody with it," said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the car-step.

Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless pressure.

For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily. The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The difficulties—the grapples—came thick and forceful about her. At the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her.

She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in upholding her. It was a link with the old things—the very best of the old things,—that stood as a continual assurance that they themselves were not altered—lowered in any way—by their alterings. This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs. Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings with them in a friendly—even intimate—fashion. If Sylvie chose to sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs. Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could find little other.

Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs. Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,—that she had these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after all, pretty hard to endure.

The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward Dot and Ray.

Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her sister,—Aunt Lora, the tailoress,—and her son, the young carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village—what shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a village beau? A village desirable he was, at any rate. Of course, Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social "laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic benediction, all the way down.

I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts. This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress, went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly. Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving home.

Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite."

[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much pitch-forked up into heaps behind.]

Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and harder.

Sabina Bowen went away.

She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,—neat and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread work about the eaves and porch,—which was to be vacated at that time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances, the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina eagerly one evening with the news.

Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other; of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread, and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person; it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for dinner.

And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as it may be.

She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs, because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish, jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers."

That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices. By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs. Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean."

At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars. They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half, respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs. Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and effectually done it.

But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the principal every six months?

In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season in that village,—nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to make, and girls going off every Monday morning?

She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be able to answer a word. But the lease,—for another year? What should they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands?

If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how!

The little poem of village living,—of home simpleness and frugal prettiness,—of that, the two first lines alone had rhymed!

They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away.

Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother; and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie.

God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under; even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she would,—have what she wanted.

Then she went to see Mr. Frost.

"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an answer of himself.

The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy. It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily.

Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out. She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines without moving from his seat.

"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned back to his other papers,—his notes of yesterday's debate in the House.

* * * * *

Early in June, there came lovely days.

Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire."

She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and names were suddenly announced.

"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!"

Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry.

"What shall I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth is my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what hair!"

She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that cloudiness beneath which they shone.

Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful spring.

"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she wants."

Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed; at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year ago.

"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?"

"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston; then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill them."

Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had anticipated.

By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to ask her for Class Day.

"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list, you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter. I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it were?"

"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness in letting her know. "I wish I could! But we shall be gone."

"Not before Class Day?"

"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry."

Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for nothing.

Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of his grand, pure heights."

All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had said—had done—nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither knew it of the other; that was the worst.

When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia turned round to Sylvie with a question.

"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?"

"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't mind using it. And it is mother's money; and Dr. Sainswell says she cannot have a long life."

Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear and calm,—only tender.

"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her face.

"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to me—after mother's feebleness—is the changing; the not staying of anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged."

"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly. "When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the Lord working. That is the comfort,—the certainty."

The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in Sylvie's eyes, at that word.

"How do you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall never forget that now."

Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully, in most ways, from "putting things in his head."

"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer.

Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads."

"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a very great good-for-nothing?"

"No, indeed. Why?"

"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I haven't had anything to do with horses this winter; I sent Red Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the bad? What is there so abominable about them?"

"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand and splendid,—in type,—you know. Horses are powers; men are made to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he stops there,—playing with the signs. He might as well ride a stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do, all his life."

Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,—

"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words, just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I might do something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy, and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my father?"

"I don't know that," returned Miss Kirkbright. "It might be; but it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up. You ought to be quite sure what you stay for."

"I won't stay for any nonsense. I mean to talk with him to-night."

"Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it all out honestly with him."

Which advice—the first clause of it—Rodney proceeded instantly to follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and passive thing.

When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery stable, he went round to his father's rooms and took tea with him.

The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, "I want a talk with you, father. Can I have it now? I must be back at Cambridge by ten."

Mr. Sherrett looked in his son's face. There was nothing there of uncomfortableness,—of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter. He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of "No scrape, I hope, Rod?" The question was asked and answered between their eyes.

"Certainly, my boy," he said, rising. "Step in there; the man will be up presently to take away these things."

The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond which were sleeping and bath-rooms.

Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the latter carefully in two, and lit one half.

"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal beginning after they should be closeted and seated,—"I've been thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,—before I take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I ought to have got ahead a little by that time."

Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it.

"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?"

"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'—as Nurse Pond used to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough to do for a gentleman,—a man, I hope. But I should like to take hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't take care of myself—and more."

"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door."

After that, of course, we cannot listen.

They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr. Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man, can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,—

"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,—for both your sakes."

"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were young."

"Don't I?" said his father, with emphasis, and a kindly smile. "If anything happens, come to me. Meanwhile,—you may talk, if you like, to Aunt Euphrasia. I'll trust her."

And so the Lord set this angel of his to watch over this thread of our story.

We may leave it here for a while.



CHAPTER VII.

BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW.

"Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs, Sitting so long atop of my eggs! Never a minute for rest to snatch; I wonder when they are going to hatch!

"Cluck! cluck! listen! tseep! Down in the nest there's a stir and a peep. Everything comes to its luck some day; I've got chickens! What will folks say?"

Bel Bree made that rhyme. It came into her head suddenly one morning, sitting in her little bedroom window that looked right over the grass yard into the open barn-door, where the hens stalked in and out; and one, with three chickens, was at that minute airing herself and her family that had just come out of their shells into the world, and walked about already as if the great big world was only there, just as they had of course expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. She was just old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind expressed itself in that proud cluck, and pert, excited carriage. She had done a wonderful thing, and she didn't know how she had done it. Bel "read it like coarse print,"—as her step-mother was wont to say of her own perspicacities,—and put it into jingle, as she had a trick of doing with things.

Bel Bree lived in New Hampshire; fifteen miles from a railway; in the curious region where the old times and the new touch each other and mix up; where the women use towels, and table-cloths, and bed-spreads, of their mothers' own hand-weaving, and hem their new ones with sewing-machines brought by travelling agents to their doors; where the men mow and rake their fields with modern inventions, but only get their newspapers once a week; where the "help" are neighbors' girls, who wear overskirts and high hats, and sit at the table with the family; where there are rag carpets and "painted chamber-sets;" where they feed calves and young turkeys, and string apples to dry in the summer, and make wonderful patchwork quilts, and wax flowers, and worsted work, perhaps, in the long winters; where they go to church and to sewing societies from miles about, over tremendous hills and pitches, with happy-go-lucky wagons and harnesses that never come to grief; where they have few schools and intermitted teaching, yet turn out, somehow, young men who work their way into professions, and girls who take the world by instinct, and understand a great deal perfectly well that is beyond their practical reach; where the old Puritan stiffness keeps them straight, but gets leavened in some marvelous way with the broader and more generous thought of the time, and wears a geniality that it is half unconscious of; the region where, if you are lucky enough to get into it to know it, you find yourself, as Miss Euphrasia said, encouraged and put in heart again about the world. Things are so genuine; when they make a step forward, they are really there.