middle of June.

She set the three tin lunch-boxes (two for the four boys and one for
me) on the back of the stove and stood looking a moment at them.

"Are you getting tired of spreading us bread and butter?" I asked.

She made no reply.

"If you don't put us up our comforts this year, how are we going to
dispose of all that strawberry jam and currant jelly?"

"I am not tired of putting up lunches," she answered. "I was just
wondering if this year we ought not to go back to town. Four miles
each way for the boys to school, and twenty each way for you. Are n't
we paying a pretty high price for the hens and the pleasures of being
snowed in?"

"An enormous price," I affirmed solemnly.

"And we 've paid it now these dozen winters running. Let's go into
Boston and take that suite of wedge-shaped rooms we looked at last fall
in Hotel Huntington, at the intersection of the Avenue and the railroad
tracks. The boys can count freight cars until they are exhausted, and
watch engines from their windows night and day."

"It isn't a light matter," she went on. "And we can't settle it by
making it a joke. You need to be near your work; I need to be nearer
human beings; the children need much more rest and freedom than these
long miles to school and these many chores allow them."

"You 're entirely right, my dear, and this time we 'll do it. Our good
neighbor here will take the cow; I 'll give the cabbages away, and send
for 'Honest Wash' Curtis to come for the hens."

"But look at all this wild-grape jelly!" she exclaimed, turning to an
array of forty-four little garnet jars which she had just covered with
hot paraffin against the coming winter.

"And the thirteen bushels of potatoes," I broke in. "And the
apples--there are going to be eight or ten barrels of prime Baldwins
this year. And--"

But it never comes to an end--it never has yet, for as soon as we
determine to do it, we feel that we can or not, just as we please.
Simply deciding that we will move in yields us such an instant and
actual city sojourn that we seem already to have been and are now
gladly getting back to the country again.

So here we have stayed summer and winter, knowing that we ought to go
back nearer my work so that I can do more of it; and nearer the center
of social life so we can get more of it--life being pretty much lost
that is not spent in working, or going, or talking! Here we have
stayed even through the winters, exempt f