nto
the bottom of her new trunk. She patted it down gently, and gave it a
little stroke, just as she pats and strokes mother herself sometimes.

"_All_ new things are only dreary," she says. "I must have some of the
old."

"I should just like to know one thing,--if I might," said Rosamond,
deferentially, after we had begun to go to bed one evening. She was
sitting in her white night-dress, on the box-sofa, with her shoe
in her hand. "I should just like to know what made you behave so
beforehand, Barbara?"

"I was in a buzz," said Barbara. "And it _was_ beforehand. I suppose I
knew it was coming,--like a thunderstorm."

"You came pretty near securing that it _shouldn't_ come," said
Rosamond, "after all."

"I couldn't help that; it wasn't my part of the affair."

"You might have just kept quiet, as you were before," said Rose.

"Wait and see," said Barbara, concisely. "People shouldn't come
bringing things in their hands. It's just like going down stairs to
get these presents. The very minute I see a corner of one of those
white paper parcels, don't I begin to look every way, and say all
sorts of things in a hurry? Wouldn't I like to turn my back and run
off if I could? Why don't they put them under the sofa, or behind the
door, I wonder?"

"After all--" began Rosamond, still with the questioning inflection.

"After all--" said Barbara, "there was the fire. That, luckily, was
something else!"

"Does there always have to be a fire?" asked Ruth, laughing.

"Wait and see," repeated Barbara. "Perhaps you'll have an earthquake."

We have time for talks. We take up every little chink of time to have
each other in. We want each other in all sorts of ways; we never
wanted each other so, or _had_ each other so, before.

Delia Waite is here, and there is some needful stitching going on; but
the minutes are alongside the stitches, they are not eaten up; there
are minutes everywhere. We have got a great deal of life into a little
while; and--we have finished up our Home Story, to the very present
instant.

* * * * *

Who finishes it? Who tells it?

Well,--"the kettle began it." Mrs. Peerybingle--pretty much--finished
it. That is, the story began itself, then Ruth discovered that it was
beginning, and began, first, to put it down. Then Ruth grew busy, and
she wouldn't always have told quite enough of the Ruthy part; and Mrs.
Holabird got hold of it, as she gets hold of everything, an