We counted up; it was only seven weeks.

"As if that were the whole of it!" said Doctor Ingleside. "As if the
Lord didn't know! As if they hadn't been living on, to just this
meeting-place! She knows his life, and the sort of it, though she has
never been in it with him before; that is, we'll concede that, for the
sake of argument, though I'm not so sure about it; and he has come
right here into hers. They are fair, open, pleasant ways, both of
them; and here, from the joining, they can both look back and take in,
each the other's; and beyond they just run into one, you see, as
foreordained, and there's no other way for them to go."

Nobody knew it but ourselves that next night,--Thursday. Doctor
Hautayne read beautiful things from the Brownings at Miss Pennington's
that evening; it was his turn to provide; but for us,--we looked into
new depths in Leslie's serene, clear, woman eyes, and we felt the
intenser something in his face and voice, and the wonder was that
everybody could not see how quite another thing than any merely
written poetry was really "next" that night for Leslie and for John
Hautayne.

That was in December; it was the first of March when Grandfather
Holabird died.

At about Christmas-time mother had taken a bad cold. We could not let
her get up in the mornings to help before breakfast; the winter work
was growing hard; there were two or three fires to manage besides the
furnace, which father attended to; and although our "chore-man" came
and split up kindlings and filled the wood-boxes, yet we were all
pretty well tired out, sometimes, just with keeping warm. We began to
begin to say things to each other which nobody actually finished. "If
mother doesn't get better," and "If this cold weather keeps on," and
"_Are_ we going to co-operate ourselves to death, do you think?" from
Barbara, at last.

Nobody said, "We shall have to get a girl again." Nobody wanted to do
that; and everybody had a secret feeling of Aunt Roderick, and her
prophecy that we "shouldn't hold out long." But we were crippled and
reduced; Ruth had as much as ever she could do, with the short days
and her music.

"I begin to believe it was easy enough for Grant to say 'all
_summer_,'" said Barbara; "but _this_ is Valley Forge." The kitchen
fire wouldn't burn, and the thermometer was down to 3 deg. above. Mother
was worrying up stairs, we knew, because we would not let her come
down until it was warm and her coffee was ready.