"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new
pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn,
unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old
and tired, which _I_ think there is never any need of doing."

"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause
in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a
little suggestion from it.

"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these
days."

"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be
done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright
held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I
mean,"--she gathered herself up bravely to say,--"I should like
dearly to do _anything_ for Amy; but I have thought it would be a
good plan--if I could--to do something like that for the sake of
earning; as Dot Ingraham does."

"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss
Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt.

"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always
things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the
grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,--which we _have_ to
have,--turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages--and mother's
wine--and cream--and fresh eggs,--I get so worried when the bills
come in!"

Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling
her money and housekeeping troubles.

"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just
as much as I can do,--of those kinds of work,--and a poor girl would
waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much,
myself. If Sabina were to go,--and she will next spring,--I am
afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two."

For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that
she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is
wonderful how much work one person, who _does_ none of it and who
must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs.
Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the
morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she
never _could_ remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,--she
needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And
she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it;
one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was th