ess 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 ha