Marm and grandmarm liked it better.

“Deary me!” ejaculated grandma, “it’s an age since you were here.”

“A whole week,” declared Marjorie, standing on tiptoe to hang up her sack and hat on a hook near the shelves.

“Nobody much comes in and it seems longer,” complained the old lady.

“I think she’s very good to come once a week,” said Hollis’ sad-faced mother.

“Oh, I like to come,” said Marjorie, pushing one of the wooden-bottomed chairs to grandmother’s side.

“It seems to me, things have happened to your house all of a sudden,” said Mrs. Rheid, as she gave a final rub to the pump handle and hung up one of the tin washbasins over the sink.

“So it seems to us,” replied Marjorie; “mother and I hardly feel at home yet.  It seems so queer at the table with Linnet gone and two strangers—­well, Mr. Holmes isn’t a stranger, but he’s a stranger at breakfast time.”

“Don’t you know how it all came about?” inquired grandmother, who “admired” to get down to the roots of things.

“No, I guess—­I think,” she hastily corrected, “that nobody does.  We all did it together.  Linnet wanted to go with Miss Prudence and we all wanted her to go; Mr. Holmes wanted to come and we all wanted him to come; and then Mr. Holmes knew about Morris Kemlo, and father wanted a boy to do the chores for winter and Morris wanted to come, because he’s been in a drug store and wasn’t real strong, and his mother thought farm work and sea air together would be good for him.”

“And you don’t go to school?” said Mrs. Rheid, bringing her work, several yards of crash to cut up into kitchen towels and to hem.  Her chair was also a hard kitchen chair; Hollis’ mother had never “humored” herself, she often said, there was not a rocking chair in her house until all her boys were big boys; she had thumped them all to sleep in a straight-backed, high, wooden chair.  But with this her thumping had ceased; she was known to be as lax in her government as the father was strict in his.

She was a little woman, with large, soft black eyes, with a dumb look of endurance about the lips and a drawl in her subdued voice.  She had not made herself, her loving, rough boys, and her stern, faultfinding husband, had moulded not only her features, but her character.  She was afraid of God because she was afraid of her husband, but she loved God because she knew he must love her, else her boys would not love her.

“Is Linnet homesick?” she questioned as her sharp shears cut through the crash.

“Yes, but not very much.  She likes new places.  She likes the school, and the girls, so far, and she likes Miss Prudence’s piano.  Hollis has been to see her, and Helen Rheid has called to see her, and invited her and Miss Prudence to come to tea some time.  Miss Prudence wrote me about Helen, and she’s lovely, Mrs. Rheid.”

“So Hollis said.  Have you brought her picture back?”