them, are silently indifferent to you. Some make you feel that you are
not wanted in the least; these usually have a lot of gilt furniture, and
what are called objects of art set stiffly about. Some seem to be having
an untidy good time all to themselves, in which you are not included.

The De Guenther house, staid and softly toned, did none of these things.
It gave the Liberry Teacher, in her neat, last year's best suit, a
feeling as of gentle welcome-home. She felt contented and _belonging_
even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustling
gently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant and
unperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat,
who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with four
feet.

All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasant
converse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, about
many amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. The
Liberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlingly
in a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treated
scholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of.
She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. She
approved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very much
for comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, and
thought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyes
filled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional--indeed, rather a
sarcastic--quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But she
smiled, when she saw that they noticed her.

"That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came away
from home," she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "and
Father quoted Horace so much every day that--that I felt as if an old
friend had walked in!"

But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his careful
evening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in her
gray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as if
she had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner was
served, a dinner as different--well, she didn't want to remember in its
presence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded the
moment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy.

It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk about
books and m