Nobody said, "We shall have to get a girl again." Nobody wanted to do that; and everybody had a secret feeling of Aunt Roderick, and her prophecy that we "shouldn't hold out long." But we were crippled and reduced; Ruth had as much as ever she could do, with the short days and her music.
"I begin to believe it was easy enough for Grant to say 'all summer,'" said Barbara; "but this is Valley Forge." The kitchen fire wouldn't burn, and the thermometer was down to 3° above. Mother was worrying up stairs, we knew, because we would not let her come down until it was warm and her coffee was ready.
That very afternoon Stephen came in from school with a word for the hour.
"The Stilkings are going to move right off to New Jersey," said he. "Jim Stilking told me so. The doctor says his father can't stay here."
"Arctura Fish won't go," said Rosamond, instantly.
"Arctura Fish is as neat as a pin, and as smart as a steel trap," said Barbara, regardless of elegance; "and—since nobody else will ever dare to give in—I believe Arctura Fish is the very next thing, now, for us!"
"It isn't giving in; it is going on," said Mrs. Holabird.
It certainly was not going back.
"We have got through ploughing-time, and now comes seed-time, and then harvest," said Barbara. "We shall raise, upon a bit of renovated earth, the first millennial specimen,—see if we don't!—of what was supposed to be an extinct flora,—the Domestica antediluviana."
Arctura Fish came to us.