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 saucin