l day
long. Then another child had come and another. The first child went to
school with a maid--there were three maids in the house now. Ernestine
watched the orderly development of this family with all the interest of
a nature lover observing a nest of robins. At first when the shutters
were closed in the early hot days of June she was afraid lest other
hands might open them in the autumn, but after a time she knew her
family well enough to understand that they were not the kind that moves,
except for death or other cogent cause. She inferred that they were
becoming more prosperous, as was quite proper. There was an increasing
amount of coming and going at the old-fashioned door, and she got to
know the habitual visitors apart from the merely casual acquaintances.
In time she built up from her myriad glances across the street a
substantial family tree of uncles and aunts, cousins and brothers. What
interested her most were the occasional glimpses of the front rooms she
had when the maids opened wide the windows and pushed aside the
curtains. She was enabled thus to observe three layers of an orderly,
inviting domesticity: on the first floor she could see a large, soft
rug, an oil painting, a lovely silk hanging that shut off the inner
room, and a corner of a mahogany case with some foreign bric-a-brac. She
liked best the floor above, where the family mostly lived when they were
by themselves: here was one large recessed room where the crowded
book-shelves went to the ceiling, a real fire burned in a fireplace, and
real lamps lighted a large table, around which the members of the family
read or worked or played. Here the lady of the house--a vigorous little
body, with laughing eyes--sat and sewed, had tea with visitors, read to
her children, and wrote letters. Here in the winter twilight before the
day at the laundry was finished the man of the house entered with a
jerky little masterful step, crossed to the chair where his wife sat
reading, leaned over, kissed her, and having established himself with
back to the fire delivered himself, so Ernestine judged, of his daily
budget of news. How she would like to hear what he had to say!

It was all a little pantomime of domestic life,--a varied, yet orderly
pantomime, and it had continued with suitable variations for more than
seven years. Ernestine often thought about it, not so much during the
day when her mind was occupied with business wherever her eyes might be,
as at