eriously. "The owner never missed them."

"Why, Rosamond!" cried Stephen, looking up from his Latin grammar.

"Did!" persisted Rosamond. "And would again. I'm sure I wanted 'em
most. Hens lay themselves out on their underclothing, don't they?" she
went on, quietly, putting the white against the black, and admiring
the effect. "They don't dress much outside."

"O, hens! What did you make us think it was people for?"

"Don't you ever let anybody know it was hens! Never cackle about
contrivances. Things mustn't be contrived; they must happen. Woman and
her accidents,--mine are usually catastrophes."

Rosamond was so busy fastening in the plume, and giving it the right
set-up, that she talked a little delirium of nonsense.

Barbara flung down a magazine,--some old number.

"Just as they were putting the very tassel on to the cap of the
climax, the page is torn out! What do you want, little cat?" she went
on to her pussy, that had tumbled out of her lap as she got up, and
was stretching and mewing. "Want to go out doors and play, little cat?
Well, you can. There's plenty of room out of doors for two little
cats!" And going to the door with her, she met grandfather and the
cane coming in.

There was time enough for Mrs. Holabird to pull down the blinds, and
for Ruth to take a long, thinking look out from under hers, through
the sash of window left unshaded; for old Mr. Holabird and his cane
were slow; the more awful for that.

Ruth thought to herself, "Yes; there is plenty of room out of doors;
and yet people crowd so! I wonder why we can't live bigger!"

[Illustration]

Mrs. Holabird's thinking was something like it.

"Five hundred dollars to worry about, for what is set down upon a few
square yards of 'out of doors.' And inside of that, a great contriving
and going without, to put something warm underfoot over the sixteen
square feet that we live on most!"

She had almost a mind to pull up the blinds again; it was such a very
little matter, the bit of new carpet, after all.

"How do I know what they were thinking?" Never mind. People do know,
or else how do they ever tell stories? We know lots of things that we
_don't_ tell all the time. We don't stop to think whether we know
them or not; but they are underneath the things we feel, and the
things we do.

Grandfather came in, and said over the same old stereotypes. He had a
way of saying them, so that we knew just what was coming, sentence
after sentence.