At dark Matthew brought Millie home and the three sat for a while together on the porch. Ellen had been afraid that she might cry, but the event seemed too unreal to draw tears from a fountain so nearly exhausted. Millie rocked rapidly back and forth, for once as loquacious as her sisters. She stood a little in awe of Ellen's mind, but she believed that she was making a favorable impression upon her. She was nervous and excited and her short sentences were not always completed.
"I haven't yet been in your house except last month when your father—" Millie feared that she had made a mistake.
"Would you like to go through it now?" asked Ellen, unmoved by Millie's allusion.
"To-morrow will do for sight-seeing," said Matthew with heavy facetiousness unlike him.
"I guess it will!" laughed Millie. "It seems as though I'm to be here a long time, from what the preacher said!"
When the clock struck nine, Matthew rose. Calvin had attended to the stock, Matthew had given himself a whole holiday, the only holiday he was to give himself deliberately in all his life. Millie also rose abruptly.
"Are you going to bed, Ellen?" asked Matthew.
"Not yet."
"You'll lock the doors?"