th the kindliest intent, the happiness of us all overflowed
in speech about the common-place, the trivial, the irrelevant, and we
all fell talking at once there in the hall, and told one another things
which we knew perfectly already, and we listened, nodding, and laughed a
great deal at nothing in the world--save that life is good.

* * * * *

We three walked home together in the afternoon sunshine--the man who,
through all this time in Friendship, had been dear, and Calliope and I.
I thought that Daphne Street had never looked so beautiful. The tulip
beds on the lawns had been re-filled for summer, a touch of bonfire
smoke hung in the air, Eppleby Holcomb was mending his picket gate, and
over many magic thresholds of the cool walks were lintels of the boughs.
Down town Abigail Arnold was laying cream puffs in the home bakery
window; at the Helmans' Mis' Doctor Helman, wound in a shawl and a
fascinator, was training her matrimony vine; the Liberty sisters had let
out their chickens and, posted in a great triangle, were keeping them
well within Liberty lawn confines; Doctor June was working in his garden
and he waved his hat at us like a boy. ("It's a year ago now they give
him his benefit," Calliope remembered; "ice-cream an' strawberries an'
cake. An' every soul that come in he treated, one after another. An'
when they got hold of him an' told him what that was doin' to the
benefit box, he wanted to know whose benefit it was, anyway. An' he kep'
on treatin' folks up to the last spoonful o' cream. He said he never had
such a good time since he was born. I donno but he showed us _how_ to
give a benefit, too.")

We were crossing the lawn to Oldmoxon House when I said to Calliope what
it had been decided that day that I should say:--

"Calliope," I asked, "could you be ready in a month or two to leave
Friendship for good, and come to us in town, and live with us for
always?"

She looked up at one and the other of us, with her little embarrassed
laugh.

"You're makin' fun o' me," she said.

But when we had explained that we were wholly serious, she stopped and
leaned against one of the great trees before the house; and it was at
Oldmoxon House rather than at us that she looked as she answered:--

"I couldn't," she said quickly, and with a manner of breathlessness, "I
couldn't. You know how I've wanted to leave Friendship, too, you know
that. An' I want to yet, as far as wantin' goes.