were no holes in the hours either.
"Whether she was most bird or bee, it was hard to tell," her mother
said of her; from the time she used to sweep and dust her garret
baby-house along the big beams in the old house at Homesworth, and
make little cheeses, and set them to press in wooden pill-boxes from
which she had punched the bottoms out, till now, that she began to
take upon herself the daily freshening of the new parlors in Aspen
Street, and had long lessons of geometry to learn, whose dry
demonstrations she set to odd little improvised recitatives of
music, and chanted over while she ran up and down putting away clean
linen for her mother, that Luclarion brought up from the wash.

As for Hazel, she was only another variation upon the same sweet
nature. There was more of outgo and enterprise with her. Diana made
the thing or the place pleasant that she was in or doing. Hazel
sought out new and blessed inventions. "There was always something
coming to the child that wouldn't ever have come to no one else,"
Luclarion said. "And besides that, she was a real 'Witch Hazel;' she
could tell where the springs were, and what's more, where they
warn't."

Luclarion Grapp would never have pleaded guilty to "dropping into
poetry" in any light whatsoever; but what she meant by this was not
exactly according to the letter, as one may easily see.

IX.

HAZEL'S INSPIRATION.

What was the use of "looking," unless things were looked at? Mrs.
Ledwith found at the end of the winter that she ought to give a
party. Not a general one; Mrs. Ledwith always said "not a general
one," as if it were an exception, whereas she knew better than ever
to undertake a general party; her list would be _too_ general, and
heterogeneous. It would simply be a physical, as well as a social,
impossibility. She knew quantities of people separately and very
cordially, in her easy have-a-good-time-when-you-can style, that she
could by no means mix, or even gather together. She picked up
acquaintances on summer journeys, she accepted civilities wherever
she might be, she asked everybody to her house who took a fancy to
her, or would admire her establishment, and if she had had a spring
cleaning or a new carpeting, or a furbishing up in any way, the next
thing was always to light up and play it off,--to try it on to
somebody. What were houses for? And there was always somebody who
ought to be paid attention to; somebody staying with a friend, or a