probably. A newspaper never enters her doors, and
do you believe she has a relative who would be reckless enough to break
it to her?"

"I hope she hasn't, anyhow."

"They haven't had time to go to her. They have all been here. People
have been coming all day with offers of help--even Jessy's Mr.
Cottrel--and oh, Ben, she told me she meant to marry him! Bonny Page," a
little sob broke from her, "Bonny Page wanted to give up her trip to
Europe and have me take the money. Then everybody's been sending me
luncheons and jellies and things just exactly as if I were an invalid."

"Hit's de way dey does in war time, honey," remarked Aunt Euphronasia,
shaking little Benjamin with the slow, cradling movement of the arms
known only to the negroes.

Downstairs the auction was over, the drawling monologue was succeeded by
a babel of voices, and glancing through the blinds, I saw the real
estate men untying their horses from the young maples. A swirl of dust
laden with the scent of the catalpa blew up from the street.

"But we can't take help, Sally," I said, almost fiercely.

"No, we can't take help, I told them so--I told them that we didn't need
it. In a few years we'd be back where we were, I said, and I believed
it."

"Do you believe it after listening to that confounded fog-horn on the
porch?"

"Well, it's a trial to faith, as Aunt Mitty would say, but, oh, Ben, I
really _do_ believe it still."

CHAPTER XXVII

WE CLOSE THE DOOR BEHIND US

It was a warm spring afternoon when we closed the door behind us for the
last time, and took the car for Church Hill, where we had rented several
rooms on the first floor of the house with the enchanted garden. As the
car descended into the neighbourhood of the Old Market, with its tightly
packed barrooms, its squalid junk shops, its strings of old clothes
waving before darkened, ill-smelling doorways, I seemed to have stepped
suddenly backward into a place that was divided between the dream and
the actuality. I remembered my awakening on the pile of straw, with the
face of John Chitling beaming down on me over the wheelbarrow of
vegetables; and the incidents of that morning--the long line of stalls
giving out brilliant flashes from turnips and onions, the sharp, fishy
odour from the strings of mackerel and perch, the very bloodstains on
the apron and rolled-up sleeves of the butcher--all these things were
more vivid to my consciousness than were the faces of Sally and of