Mrs. Holabird pulled down the blinds, because he would be sure to notice the new carpet the first thing; it was a cheap ingrain, and the old one had been all holes, so that Barbara had proposed putting up a board at the door,—­“Private way; dangerous passing.”  And we had all made over our three winters’ old cloaks this year, for the sake of it:  and we hadn’t got the carpet then till the winter was half over.  But we couldn’t tell all this to Grandfather Holabird.  There was never time for the whole of it.  And he knew that Mr. Stephen was troubled just now for his rent and taxes.  For Stephen Holabird was the one in this family who couldn’t make, or couldn’t manage, money.  There is always one.  I don’t know but it is usually the best one of all, in other ways.

Stephen Holabird is a good man, kind and true; loving to live a gentle, thoughtful life, in his home and among his books; not made for the din and scramble of business.

He never looks to his father; his father does not believe in allowing his sons to look to him; so in the terrible time of ’57, when the loss and the worry came, he had to struggle as long as he could, and then go down with the rest, paying sixty cents on the dollar of all his debts, and beginning again, to try and earn the forty, and to feed and clothe his family meanwhile.

Grandfather Holabird sent us down all our milk, and once a week, when he bought his Sunday dinner, he would order a turkey for us.  In the summer, we had all the vegetables we wanted from his garden, and at Thanksgiving a barrel of cranberries from his meadow.  But these obliged us to buy an extra half-barrel of sugar.  For all these things we made separate small change of thanks, each time, and were all the more afraid of his noticing our new gowns or carpets.

“When you haven’t any money, don’t buy anything,” was his stern precept.

“When you’re in the Black Hole, don’t breathe,” Barbara would say, after he was gone.

But then we thought a good deal of Grandfather Holabird, for all.  That day, when he came in and astonished us so, we were all as busy and as cosey as we could be.

Mrs. Holabird was making a rug of the piece of the new carpet that had been cut out for the hearth, bordering it with a strip of shag.  Rosamond was inventing a feather for her hat out of the best of an old black-cock plume, and some bits of beautiful downy white ones with smooth tips, that she brought forth out of a box.

“What are they, Rose?  And where did you get them?” Ruth asked, wondering.

“They were dropped,—­and I picked them up,” Rosamond answered, mysteriously.  “The owner never missed them.”

“Why, Rosamond!” cried Stephen, looking up from his Latin grammar.

“Did!” persisted Rosamond.  “And would again.  I’m sure I wanted ’em most.  Hens lay themselves out on their underclothing, don’t they?” she went on, quietly, putting the white against the black, and admiring the effect.  “They don’t dress much outside.”