She has begged that old garnet and white silk, though, at last, from mother.  Ruth saw her fold it up and put it, the very first thing, into the bottom of her new trunk.  She patted it down gently, and gave it a little stroke, just as she pats and strokes mother herself sometimes.

“All new things are only dreary,” she says.  “I must have some of the old.”

“I should just like to know one thing,—­if I might,” said Rosamond, deferentially, after we had begun to go to bed one evening.  She was sitting in her white night-dress, on the box-sofa, with her shoe in her hand.  “I should just like to know what made you behave so beforehand, Barbara?”

“I was in a buzz,” said Barbara.  “And it was beforehand.  I suppose I knew it was coming,—­like a thunderstorm.”

“You came pretty near securing that it shouldn’t come,” said Rosamond, “after all.”

“I couldn’t help that; it wasn’t my part of the affair.”

“You might have just kept quiet, as you were before,” said Rose.

“Wait and see,” said Barbara, concisely.  “People shouldn’t come bringing things in their hands.  It’s just like going down stairs to get these presents.  The very minute I see a corner of one of those white paper parcels, don’t I begin to look every way, and say all sorts of things in a hurry?  Wouldn’t I like to turn my back and run off if I could?  Why don’t they put them under the sofa, or behind the door, I wonder?”

“After all—­” began Rosamond, still with the questioning inflection.

“After all—­” said Barbara, “there was the fire.  That, luckily, was something else!”

“Does there always have to be a fire?” asked Ruth, laughing.

“Wait and see,” repeated Barbara.  “Perhaps you’ll have an earthquake.”

We have time for talks.  We take up every little chink of time to have each other in.  We want each other in all sorts of ways; we never wanted each other so, or had each other so, before.

Delia Waite is here, and there is some needful stitching going on; but the minutes are alongside the stitches, they are not eaten up; there are minutes everywhere.  We have got a great deal of life into a little while; and—­we have finished up our Home Story, to the very present instant.

* * * * *

Who finishes it?  Who tells it?

Well,—­“the kettle began it.”  Mrs. Peerybingle—­pretty much—­finished it.  That is, the story began itself, then Ruth discovered that it was beginning, and began, first, to put it down.  Then Ruth grew busy, and she wouldn’t always have told quite enough of the Ruthy part; and Mrs. Holabird got hold of it, as she gets hold of everything, and she would not let it suffer a “solution of continuity.”  Then, partly, she observed; and partly we told tales, and recollected and reminded; and partly, here and there, we rushed in,—­especially I, Barbara,—­and did little bits ourselves; and so it came to be a “Song o’ Sixpence,” and at least four Holabirds were “singing in the pie.”