Mrs. Geoffrey laughed.

"You have an instinct for the fine proprieties, without a bit of respect for any conventional fences," she said. "I'll _ask_ Dorris."

"Then I'm sure she'll come," said Hazel, understanding quite well and gladly the last three words, and pa.s.sing over the first phrase as if it had been a Greek motto, put there to be skipped.

"Ada has stopped practicing," said Mrs. Geoffrey, who had undertaken the entertainment of her little guest during her daughter's half hour of music. "She will be waiting for you now."

Hazel instantly jumped up.

But she paused after three steps toward the door, to say gently, looking back over her shoulder with a shy glance out of her timidly clear eyes,--

"Perhaps,--I hope I haven't,--stayed too long!"

"Come back, you little hazel-sprite!" cried Mrs. Geoffrey; and when she got her within reach again, she put her hands one each side of the little blushing, gleaming face, and kissed it, saying,--

"I don't _think_,--I'm slow, usually, in making up my mind about people, big or little,--but I don't think you can stay too long,--or come too often, dear!"

"I've found another for you, Aleck," she said, that night at the hair-brushing, to her husband.

He always came to sit in her dressing-room, then; and it was at this quiet time that they gave each other, out of the day they had lived in their partly separate ways and duties, that which made it for each like a day lived twice, so that the years of their life counted up double.

"He is a young architect, who hasn't architected much, because he doesn't know the people who build things; and he wouldn't be a gold broker with his uncle in New York, because he believes in doing money's worth in the world for the world's money. Isn't he one?"

"Sounds like it," said Mr. Geoffrey. "What is his name?"

"Kincaid."

"Nephew of James R. Kincaid?" said Mr. Geoffrey, with an interrogation that was also an exclamation. "And wouldn't go in with him! Why, it was just to have picked up dollars!"

"Exactly," replied his wife. "That was what he objected to."

"I should like to see the fellow."

"Don't you remember? You have seen him! The night you went for Ada to the Aspen Street party, and got into 'Crambo.' He was there; and it was his sister who wanted thirteen things. I guess they do!"

"Ask them here," said the banker.

"I mean to," Mrs. Geoffrey answered. "That is, after I've seen Hapsie Craydocke. She knows everything. I'll go there to-morrow morning."

"'Behind' is a pretty good way to get in--to some places," said Desire Ledwith, coming into the rose-pink room with news.

"Especially an omnibus. And the Ripwinkleys, and the Kincaids, and old Miss Craydocke, and for all I know, Mrs. Scarup and Luclarion Grapp are going to Summit Street to tea to-night. Boston is topsy-turvey; Holmes was a prophet; and 'Brattle Street and Temple Place are interchanging cards!' Mother, we ought to get intimate with the family over the grocer's shop. Who knows what would come of it? There are fairies about in disguise, I'm sure; or else it's the millennium. Whichever it is, it's all right for Hazel, though; she's ready. Don't you feel like foolish virgins, Flo and Nag? I do."

I am afraid it was when Desire felt a little inclination to "nag"

her elder sister, that she called her by that reprehensible name.

Agatha only looked lofty, and vouchsafed no reply; but Florence said,--

"There's no need of any little triumphs or mortifications. n.o.body crows, and n.o.body cries. _I_'m glad. Diana's a dear, and Hazel's a duck, besides being my cousins; why shouldn't I? Only there _is_ a large hole for the cats, and a little hole for the kittens; and I'd as lief, myself, go in with the cats."

"The Marchbankses are staying there, and Professor Gregory. I don't know about cats," said Desire, demurely.

"It's a reason-why party, for all that," said Agatha, carelessly, recovering her good humor.

"Well, when any nice people ask me, I hope there _will_ be a 'reason why.' It's the persons of consequence that make the 'reason why.'"

And Desire had the last word.

Hazel Ripwinkley was thinking neither of large holes nor little ones,--cats nor kittens; she was saying to Luclarion, sitting in her shady down-stairs room behind the kitchen, that looked out into the green yard corner, "how nicely things came out, after all!"

"They seemed so hobblety at first, when I went up there and saw all those beautiful books, and pictures, and people living amongst them every day, and the poor Kincaids not getting the least bit of a stretch out of their corner, ever. I'll tell you what I thought, Luclarion;" and here she almost whispered, "I truly did. I thought G.o.d was making a mistake."

Luclarion put out her lips into a round, deprecating pucker, at that, and drew in her breath,--

"Oo--sh!"

"Well, I mean it seemed as if there was a mistake somewhere; and that I'd no business, at any rate, with what they wanted so. I couldn't get over it until I asked for those pictures; and mother said it was such a bold thing to do!"

"It was bold," said Luclarion; "but it wasn't forrud. It was gi'n you, and it hit right. That was looked out for."

"It's a stumpy world," said Luclarion Grapp to Mrs. Ripwinkley, afterward; "but some folks step right over their stumps athout scarcely knowin' when!"

XII.

CRUMBS.

Desire Ledwith was, at this epoch, a perplexity and a worry,--even a positive terror sometimes,--to her mother.

It was not a case of the hen hatching ducks, it was rather as if a hen had got a hawk in her brood.

Desire's demurs and questions,--her dissatisfactions, sittings and contempts,--threatened now and then to swoop down upon the family life and comfort with destroying talons.

"She'll be an awful, strong-minded, radical, progressive, overturning woman," Laura said, in despair, to her friend Mrs.

Megilp. "And Greenley Street, and Aspen Street, and that everlasting Miss Craydocke, are making her worse. And what can I do? Because there's Uncle."

Right before Desire,--not knowing the cloud of real bewilderment that was upon her young spiritual perceptions, getting their first glimpse of a tangled and conflicting and distorted world,--she drew wondering comparisons between her elder children and this odd, anxious, restless, sharp-spoken girl.

"I don't understand it," she would say. "It isn't a bit like a child of mine. I always took things easy, and got the comfort of them somehow; I think the world is a pretty pleasant place to live in, and there's lots of satisfaction to be had; and Agatha and Florence take after me; they are nice, good-natured, contented girls; managing their allowances,--that I wish were more,--tr.i.m.m.i.n.g their own bonnets, and enjoying themselves with their friends, girl-fashion."

Which was true. Agatha and Florence were neither fretful nor dissatisfied; they were never disrespectful, perhaps because Mrs.

Ledwith demanded less of deferential observance than of a kind of jolly companionship from her daughters; a go-and-come easiness in and out of what they called their home, but which was rather the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g-up and outfitting place,--a sort of Holmes' Hole,--where they put in spring and fall, for a thorough overhaul and rig; and at other times, in intervals or emergencies, between their various and continual social trips and cruises. They were hardly ever all-togetherish, as Desire had said, if they ever were, it was over house cleaning and millinery; when the ordering was complete,--when the wardrobes were finished,--then the world was let in, or they let themselves out, and--"looked."