"There's always the brown room, and the handing round," said Barbara, "for the people you can't be intimate with, and think how crowsy this will be with Aunt Trixie or Mrs. Hobart or the Goldthwaites!"
"We shall just settle down," said Rose, gloomily.
"Well, I believe in finding our place. Every little brook runs till it does that. I don't want to stand on tip-toe all my life."
"We shall always gather to us what belongs. Every little crystal does that," said mother, taking up another simile.
"What will Aunt Roderick say?" said Ruth.
"I shall keep her out of the kitchen, and tell her we couldn't manage with one girl any longer, and so we've taken three that all wanted to get a place together."
And Barbara actually did; and it was three weeks before Mrs. Roderick found out what it really meant.
We were in a hurry to have Katty go, and to begin, after we had made up our minds; and it was with the serenest composure that Mrs. Holabird received her remark that "her week would be up a-Tuesday, an' she hoped agin then we'd be shooted wid a girl."
"Yes, Katty; I am ready at any moment," was the reply; which caused the whites of Katty's eyes to appear for a second between the lids and the irids.
There had been only one applicant for the place, who had come while we had not quite irrevocably fixed our plans.