er;" but in that winter she had grown into their home.

"Why," said Hazel to her mother, when they had the few words about
it that ended in there being no more words at all,--"that's the way
children are _born_ into houses, isn't it? They just come; and
they're new and strange at first, and seem so queer. And then after
a while you can't think how the places were, and they not in them.
Sulie belongs, mother!"

So Sulie beat eggs, and darned stockings, and painted her lovely
little flower-panels and racks and easels, and did everything that
could be done, sitting still in her round chair, or in the cushioned
corners made for her; and was always in the kitchen, above all, when
any pretty little cookery was going forward.

Vash ran in and out from the garden, and brought balsamine blossoms,
from which she pulled the little fairy slippers, and tried to match
them in pairs; and she picked off the "used-up and puckered-up"
morning glories, which she blew into at the tube-end, and "snapped"
on the back of her little brown hand.

Wasn't that being good for anything, while berry-cake was making?
The girls thought it was; as much as the balsamine blossoms were
good for anything, or the brown butterflies with golden spots on
their wings, that came and lived among them. The brown butterflies
were a "piece of the garden;" little brown Vash was a piece of the
house. Besides, she would eat some of the berry-cake when it was
made; wasn't that worth while? She would have a "little teenty one"
baked all for herself in a tin pepper-pot cover. Isn't that the
special pleasantness of making cakes where little children are?

Vash was always ready for an "Aaron," too; they could not do without
her, any more than without Sulie. Pretty soon, when Diana should
have left school, and Vash should be a little bigger, they meant to
"cooeperate," as the Holabirds had done at Westover.

Of course, they knew a great deal about the Holabirds by this time.
Hazel had stayed a week with Dorris at Miss Waite's; and one of
Witch Hazel's weeks among "real folks" was like the days or hours in
fairy land, that were years on the other side. She found out so much
and grew so close to people.

Hazel and Ruth Holabird were warm friends. And Hazel was to be
Ruth's bridesmaid, by and by!

For Ruth Holabird was going to be married to Dakie Thayne.

"That seemed so funny," Hazel said. "Ruth didn't _look_ any older
than she did; and Mr. Dakie Thayne was such a