We Girls: a Home Story

heaped up in the large round basket. Then there was the second-sized ba

Rosamond to the front door; Ruth slipped in at the back, and mother came down when she found that Rosamond had not been released. Barbara finished setting the tea-table, which she had a way of doing in a whiff, put on the sweet loaf up

ing, Ruth and I are going to do these!" an

f life, if you only know about them. Hay-making is one; and rose-gathering is one; and sprinkling and

were kept to tea, I believe. She knew how to compens

took one end of the long white ironing-table that stood across the window, pushed the water-basin into the middle, and

hat she used for the large things, and rolled them up in it, hard and fast, with a thump of her round pretty fist upon the middle before she laid it by. It was a clever little process to watch; and her arms were white in the twilight. Girls can't do all the possible pretty manoeuvres in

became aware of a

the nearest kitchen window and over Barbara's shoulder, stood Har

ork. She made up little snatches, piecemeal, of various things, and

some litt

ome litt

a little

little

pleasant-in on

G-octave, for the last line. Then she rolled up a bundle of shirts in a sq

you believe they will be as nice as this? Where shall we get ou

out one of mother's nightcaps, and speaking un

ra; "to say whether we ever would again. I believe we're

ry, who made noiseless motion of clapping his hands. How could she te

ll have to read all those Pub. Doc.s that father gets. You see women will make awful hard work of it, if they once do go at it

were possessed. "There will have to be 'Sisters of Polity.' Not that I ever will. I d

thwaite!"

me, leaning down over the rail, and speaki

ook; he could not

When you hav

ome down? Into the one-plea

ra said, stolidly, turning back

a copper water-pipe that ran down there, reached the other to something-above the window,-the mere pediment, I beli

id she, flourishing the co

I took the risk of all that when I came down amongst it.

ere, and what in the world she had said besides what she re

llow-cases?" and he came round to

," says

d the ruffled petticoat off over her head. She gave it a shower in such a hurry

te shocked, and tossing the whisk

arry spread up a pile on his part, dipping also into the

last. They stretched the sheets across the table,

sket, while Barbara buttoned her sleeves. "Where does this go? What a nice place this is!" looking rou

, girls?" came in mot

heery way. "We're coming"; and up the stairs all three

u're trying to do your duty," said Barbara, in a

with a half-diffident mischief. But Barbara walked ro

at-and-spun-sugar "chignons"; at least, commerce games and bewitching little prizes. Yet when lives just touch each other naturally, as it were,-dip into each other's little interests and doings, and take th

ike that after Leslie a

n," objected Rosamond. "It's a case o

u've just got to live your own way, and everything that belongs to it will be sure to join on. You'll have a world before you know it. I think myse

hat flights

up nineteen flights now, you know, besi

and she had to go up to Oxenham. Father went with her, but he came back the same night

lk over special affairs with father. Yet he thought everything of "Mrs. Stephen," too, and he quite relied upon her judgment and influence. But I think ol

the middle of the afternoon, so that father did not go down to his office at all; and when old Mr. Holabird went home at last, he walked over with him. Just after they had gone Leslie Goldthwaite and Harry stopped, "for a minute onl

en through the brown room and the dining-room, where a window was thrown up, as we could have it there where the three were all on one side. Ruth was coming down stairs, and saw grandfather's papers give a whirl out of his lap and across the piazza floor upon the gravel. If she had not

with us, and then the few more they took to consider whether it would do for Leslie to try to walk

they might have rushed ten miles, horizontally, before they got a chance to drop; the trees bent down and sprang again, and lashed the air to and f

,-not to fall from heaven to earth; we wondered if it would fall anywhere. It beat against the house; that stood up in its way; it rained

r father's dressing-room! It's all afloat,-hair-brushes out on voyages

ing-stand and a chair in the other. We had to pull down all his clothes and pile them upon chairs, and stop up the window with an old blanket. A pane was crack

we knew. The side door blew open with a bang, and hats, coats, and shawls went scurrying from their pegs, through sitting-room and hall, like a flight of scared, living things. We were like a little

in a wild agony; their graceful little bough-tips were all snapped off and whirled away upon the blast, leaving them in a ragged blight. A great silver poplar went over by the fence, carrying the posts and palings with it, and upturned a huge mass of roots and earth, that had silently cemented itself for half a century beneath the sward. Up and down, between Grandfather Holabird's home-field and ours, fallen loc

and show father that we were all right; directly after a lamp was set in Grandfather Holabird's north por

ed about you at home?"

nd that there would be no way of getting out again. Peopl

n, who had been in an ecstasy all the time. "L

. The wind had lulled a little from it

Harry Goldthwaite said. "That rain never stopped

g, when we went out, the

s up each side of his face against the glass, and cried out that there w

at is where the trees are down," we said. But presently it took an unobstructed diagonal, and came steadily

o let him in, and at the same time to make it nearly impossible that

nts to know if you're all comfortable, and he won't come till Mr

ot, Ro

winter's firing of wood down across the road atwixt here an

what

keep him," u

urn. He's comin' partly out of it; but it's bad. He had a kind of a warnin' once b

that another time would have stirred him to most lively speech. Rober

own room with his hat in his hand. Ho

n't be afraid now, will you, Barbara

stood nearest,-bade us all good night, and went a

ur late excitement. What strang

, and thought of as little, I suppose, as such a one ever was in any family like ours,-had yet always loome

might be g

to do but to go quietly back i

," or "startling," or "magnificent," or "terrible," or "sad." How little we could really say about the gale, even now that it was over! We could repeat that this and

ll this afternoo

th. "His hands trembled so when he was fol

would not sit in the house, though the wind was coming up then. He said he liked the air; and he and father got the shaker chairs up there by the fro

y were talking abo

ephen went home wi

her should die," said Stephen, suddenly. It could not have b

ything about that!" said Ruth;

fortables into Rosamond and Barbara's room, made up a couch for herself on the box-sofa, and gave her little white one to Leslie. We kept the door open between. We could see the light in grandfather's northwest chamber; and the

so good you are

m, in our loneliness without father and mother, and in the possible awfulness