ket, into which they would all go comfortably when they were folded
up.

One Monday night we went down as usual; some of us came in,--for we
had been playing croquet until into the twilight, and the Haddens had
just gone away, so we were later than usual at our laundry work.
Leslie and Harry went round with Rosamond to the front door; Ruth
slipped in at the back, and mother came down when she found that
Rosamond had not been released. Barbara finished setting the
tea-table, which she had a way of doing in a whiff, put on the sweet
loaf upon the white trencher, and the dish of raspberry jam and the
little silver-wire basket of crisp sugar-cakes, and then there was
nothing but the tea, which stood ready for drawing in the small
Japanese pot. Tea was nothing to get, ever.

"Mother, go back again! You tired old darling, Ruth and I are going to
do these!" and Barbara plunged in among the "blossoms."

That was what we called the fresh, sweet-smelling white things. There
are a great many pretty pieces of life, if you only know about them.
Hay-making is one; and rose-gathering is one; and sprinkling and
folding a great basket full of white clothes right out of the grass
and the air and the sunshine is one.

Mother went off,--chiefly to see that Leslie and Harry were kept to
tea, I believe. She knew how to compensate, in her lovely little
underhand way, with Barbara.

Barbara pinned up her muslin sleeves to the shoulder, shook out a
little ruffled short-skirt and put it on for an apron, took one end of
the long white ironing-table that stood across the window, pushed the
water-basin into the middle, and began with the shirts and the
starched things. Ruth, opposite, was making the soft underclothing
into little white rolls.

Barbara dampened and smoothed and stretched; she almost ironed with
her fingers, Mrs. Dunikin said. She patted and evened, laid collars
and cuffs one above another with a sprinkle of drops, just from her
finger-ends, between, and then gave a towel a nice equal shower with a
corn-whisk that she used for the large things, and rolled them up in
it, hard and fast, with a thump of her round pretty fist upon the
middle before she laid it by. It was a clever little process to
watch; and her arms were white in the twilight. Girls can't do all the
possible pretty manoeuvres in the German or out at croquet, if they
only once knew it. They do find it out in a one-sided sort of way: and
then they run to private t