"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into. It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means tied up. They can't see to their girls; they grow helplesser all the time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a down-stairs to every house, and no home anywhere. That's how it is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it. Why, the help has to get into their humpty-dumpties by three or four o'clock, and see their company. If there's sickness or anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were afraid of sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left to depend on but hotels and hospitals. Home is too big a worry. And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it. It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago."

Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,—as the Scotch grow more Scotch,—with warming up to the subject.

Sunderline laughed.

"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!"

He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at her sewing.

"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you ride out with me to Pomantic?"

Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers' ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs. Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not, perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have him blamed; for what business had she, after all,—

"Well, Ray?"

She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder; she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that "Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it seem like "anything."

"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank you, Frank."