Ruth was artful; she tucked in Lucilla Waters, after all; she said it would be such a nice chance to have her; she knew she would rather come when we were by ourselves, and especially when we had our work and patterns about.  Lucilla brought a sack and an overskirt to make; she could hardly have been spared if she had had to bring mere idle work.  She sewed in gathers upon the shirts for mother, while Delia cut out her pretty material in a style she had not seen.  If we had had grasshopper parties all summer before, this was certainly a bee, and I think we all really liked it just as well as the other.

We had the comfort of mother’s great, airy room, now, as we had never even realized it before.  Everybody had a window to sit at; green-shaded with closed blinds for the most part; but that is so beautiful in summer, when the out-of-doors comes brimming in with scent and sound, and we know how glorious it is if we choose to open to it, and how glorious it is going to be when we do throw all wide in the cooling afternoon.

“How glad I am we have to have busy weeks sometimes!” said Ruth, stopping the little “common-sense” for an instant, while she tossed a long flouncing over her sewing-table.  “I know now why people who never do their own work are obliged to go away from home for a change.  It must be dreadfully same if they didn’t.  I like a book full of different stories!”

Lucilla Waters lives down in the heart of the town.  So does Leslie Goldthwaite, to be sure; but then Mr. Goldthwaite’s is one of the old, old-fashioned houses that were built when the town was country, and that has its great yard full of trees and flowers around it now; and Mrs. Waters lives in a block, flat-face to the street, with nothing pretty outside, and not very much in; for they have never been rich, the Waterses, and Mr. Waters died ten years ago, when Lucilla was a little child.  Lucilla and her mother keep a little children’s school; but it was vacation now, of course.

Lucilla is in Mrs. Ingleside’s Bible-class; that is how Ruth, and then the rest of us, came to know her.  Arctura Fish is another of Mrs. Ingleside’s scholars.  She is a poor girl, living at service,—­or, rather, working in a family for board, clothing, and a little “schooling,”—­the best of which last she gets on Sundays of Mrs. Ingleside,—­until she shall have “learned how,” and be “worth wages.”

Arctura Fish is making herself up, slowly, after the pattern of Lucilla Waters.  She would not undertake Leslie Goldthwaite or Helen Josselyn,—­Mrs. Ingleside’s younger sister, who stays with her so much,—­or even our quiet Ruth.  But Lucilla Waters comes just next.  She can just reach up to her.  She can see how she does up her hair, in something approaching the new way, leaning back behind her in the class and tracing out the twists between the questions; for Lucilla can only afford to use her own, and a few strands of harmless Berlin wool under it; she can’t buy coils and