“Only there would be no end to it,” said Dakie Thayne, “would there?  There are coarse, vulgar people always, who are wanting to get in just for the sake of being in.  What are the nice ones to do?”

“Just be nice, I think,” said Leslie.  “Nicer with those people than with anybody else even.  If there weren’t any difficulty made about it,—­if there weren’t any keeping out,—­they would tire of the niceness probably sooner than anything.  I don’t suppose it is the fence that keeps out weeds.”

“You are just like Mrs. Ingleside,” said Ruth, walking closer to Leslie as she spoke.

“And Mrs. Ingleside is like Miss Craydocke:  and—­I didn’t suppose I should ever find many more of them, but they’re counting up,” said Dakie Thayne.  “There’s a pretty good piece of the world salted, after all.”

“If there really is any best society,” pursued Leslie, “it seems to me it ought to be, not for keeping people out, but for getting everybody in as fast as it can, like the kingdom of heaven.”

“Ah, but that is kingdom come,” said Dakie Thayne.

It seemed as if the question of “things next” was to arise continually, in fresh shapes, just now, when things next for the Holabirds were nearer next than ever before.

“We must have Delia Waite again soon, if we can get her,” said mother, one morning, when we were all quietly sitting in her room, and she was cutting out some shirts for Stephen.  “All our changes and interruptions have put back the sewing so lately.”

“We ought not to have been idle so much,” said Barbara.  “We’ve been a family of grasshoppers all summer.”

“Well, the grasshopping has done you all good.  I’m not sorry for it,” said Mrs. Holabird.  “Only we must have Delia for a week now, and be busy.”

“If Delia Waite didn’t have to come to our table!” said Rosamond.

“Why don’t you try the girl Mrs. Hadden has, mother?  She goes right into the kitchen with the other servants.”

“I don’t believe our ‘other servants’ would know what to do with her,” said Barbara.  “There’s always such a crowd in our kitchen.”

“Barbara, you’re a plague!”

“Yes.  I’m the thorn in the flesh in this family, lest it should be exalted above measure; and like Saint Paul, I magnify mine office.”

“In the way we live,” said Mrs. Holabird, “it is really more convenient to let a seamstress come right to table with us; and besides, you know what I think about it.  It is a little breath of life to a girl like that; she gets something that we can give as well as not, and that helps her up.  It comes naturally, as it cannot come with ‘other servants.’  She sits with us all day; her work is among ladies, and with them; she gets something so far, even in the midst of measuring and gorings, that common housemaids cannot get; why shouldn’t she be with us when we can leave off talk of measures and gores, and get what Ruth calls the ‘very next’?  Delia Waite is too nice a girl to be put into the kitchen to eat with Katty, in her ‘crowd.’”