candle apiece," Barbara would answer, very concisely.

"I do wish all our windows didn't look Mrs. Roderick's way," Rosamond
said once, after she had gone.

"And that she _didn't_ have to come through our clothes-yard of a
Monday morning, to see just how many white skirts we have in the
wash," added Barbara.

But this is off the track.

"What is it, Ruth?" asked Mrs. Holabird, as she came in upon the
little figure in the white chair, midway in the long light through the
open rooms. "You didn't really mind Stephen, did you?"

"O no, indeed, aunt! I was only thinking out things. I believe I've
done, pretty nearly. I guess I sha'n't go. I wanted to make sure I
wasn't provoked."

"You're talking from where you left off, aren't you, Ruthie?"

"Yes, I guess so," said Ruth, laughing. "It seems like talking right
on,--doesn't it?--when you speak suddenly out of a 'think.' I wonder
what _alone_ really means. It doesn't ever quite seem alone. Something
thinks alongside always, or else you couldn't keep it up."

"Are you making an essay on metaphysics? You're a queer little Ruth."

"Am I?" Ruth laughed again. "I can't help it. It _does_ answer back."

"And what was the answer about this time?"

That was how Ruth came to let it out.

"About going over to the Marchbanks's to-night. Don't say anything,
though. I thought they needn't have asked me just to play. And they
might have asked somebody with me. Of course it would have been as you
said, if I'd wanted to; but I've made up my mind I--needn't. I mean, I
knew right off that I _didn't_."

Ruth did talk a funny idiom of her own when she came out of one of her
thinks. But Mrs. Holabird understood. Mothers get to understand the
older idiom, just as they do baby-talk,--by the same heart-key. She
knew that the "needn't" and the "didn't" referred to the "wanting to."

"You see, I don't think it would be a good plan to let them begin
with me so."

"You're a very sagacious little Ruth," said Mrs. Holabird,
affectionately. "And a very generous one."

"No, indeed!" Ruth exclaimed at that. "I believe I think it's rather
nice to settle that I _can_ be contrary. I don't like to be
pat-a-caked."

She was glad, afterward, that Mrs. Holabird understood.

The next morning Elinor Hadden and Leslie Goldthwaite walked over, to
ask the girls to go down into the wood-hollow to get azaleas.

Rosamond and Ruth went. Barbara was busy: she was more apt to be the
busy one of a morni