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?"