n it were really yet any human life. He
quieted down in his mind, I suppose, when from morning to night he
found somebody to beam at, and a busy doing in every room. He took it
serenely then, as one of the established things upon the earth, and
put us in the regular list of homes upon his round, that he was to
leave so many cubic feet of light at daily.

I think he _might_ like to look in at that best parlor. With the six
snowy-curtained windows, it was like a great white blossom; and the
deep-green carpet and the walls with vine-leaves running all over
them, in the graceful-patterned paper that Rosamond chose, were like
the moss and foliage among which it sprung. Here and there the light
glinted upon gilded frame or rich bronze or pure Parian, and threw out
the lovely high tints, and deepened the shadowy effects, of our few
fine pictures. We had little of art, but that little was choice. It
was Mr. Holabird's weakness, when money was easy with him, to bring
home straws like these to the home nest. So we had, also, a good many
nice books; for, one at a time, when there was no hurrying bill to be
paid, they had not seemed much to buy; and in our brown room, where we
sat every day, and where our ivies had kindly wonted themselves
already to the broad, bright windows, there were stands and cases well
filled, and a great round family table in the middle, whose worn cloth
hid its shabbiness under the comfort of delicious volumes ready to the
hand, among which, central of all, stood the Shekinah of the
home-spirit,--a tall, large-globed lamp that drew us cosily into its
round of radiance every night.

Not these June nights though. I will tell you presently what the June
nights were at Westover.

We worked hard in those days, but we were right blithe about it. We
had at last got an Irish girl from "far down,"--that is their word for
the north country at home, and the north country is where the best
material comes from,--who was willing to air her ignorance in our
kitchen, and try our Christian patience, during a long pupilage, for
the modest sum of three dollars a week; than which "she could not
come indeed for less," said the friend who brought her. "All the girls
was gettin' that." She had never seen dipped toast, and she "couldn't
do starched clothes very skilful"; but these things had nothing to do
with established rates of wages.

But who cared, when it was June, and the smell of green grass and the
singing of birds