though nothing fell with any chill upon their spirits, they handled
reverently the volumes he had loved,--they used tenderly the
appliances that had been his daily convenience. With an unspoken
consent, they never sat in the seat that had been his. The young
heiresses of his place and trust made each a place for herself at
opposite ends of the large writing-table, and left his chair before
his desk as if he himself had just left it and might at any moment
come in and sit again there with them. They always kept a vase of
flowers beside the desk, at the left hand.

One day, that summer, they were up-stairs, sewing. Rachel Froke was
busy below; they could hear some light movement now and then, in the
stillness; or her voice came up through the open windows as she
spoke to Frendely, the dear old serving woman, helping her dust and
sort over glasses and jars for the yearly preserving.

I cannot tell you what an atmosphere of things and relations that
had grown and sweetened and mellowed there was about this old home;
what a lovely repose of stability, in the midst of the domestic
ferments that are all about us in the changing households of these
changing days. Frendely, who had served her maiden apprenticeship in
a country family of England, said it was like the real old places
there.

"Hazel," said Desire, suddenly,--(she did her _thinking_ deeply and
slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it
was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with
the needle,--"Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread
as quick as you can,")--"Hazel! I think I may go to Europe after
all."

"Desire!"

"And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me."

"Desire Ledwith!"

"Yes, those are my names. I haven't any more; so your surprise can't
expend itself any further in that direction. Now, listen. It's all
to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks. See?"

"O!"

"Very well; begin on interjections; they'll last some time. What I
mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last
spring at the Schermans'. She says she always travelled so much on
paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings;
you can get all sorts of splendid things into it. There are books,
and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes. Friends'
letters and art galleries. I took it right up into my mind,
silently, for my class, sometime. And pretty soon, I thin