Mother went off,—­chiefly to see that Leslie and Harry were kept to tea, I believe.  She knew how to compensate, in her lovely little underhand way, with Barbara.

Barbara pinned up her muslin sleeves to the shoulder, shook out a little ruffled short-skirt and put it on for an apron, took one end of the long white ironing-table that stood across the window, pushed the water-basin into the middle, and began with the shirts and the starched things.  Ruth, opposite, was making the soft underclothing into little white rolls.

Barbara dampened and smoothed and stretched; she almost ironed with her fingers, Mrs. Dunikin said.  She patted and evened, laid collars and cuffs one above another with a sprinkle of drops, just from her finger-ends, between, and then gave a towel a nice equal shower with a corn-whisk that she used for the large things, and rolled them up in it, hard and fast, with a thump of her round pretty fist upon the middle before she laid it by.  It was a clever little process to watch; and her arms were white in the twilight.  Girls can’t do all the possible pretty manoeuvres in the German or out at croquet, if they only once knew it.  They do find it out in a one-sided sort of way:  and then they run to private theatricals.  But the real every-day scenes are just as nice, only they must have their audiences in ones and twos; perhaps not always any audience at all.

Of a sudden Ruth became aware of an audience of one.

Upon the balcony, leaning over the rail, looking right down into the nearest kitchen window and over Barbara’s shoulder, stood Harry Goldthwaite.  He shook his head at Ruth, and she held her peace.

Barbara began to sing.  She never sang to the piano,—­only about her work.  She made up little snatches, piecemeal, of various things, and put them to any sort of words.  This time it was to her own,—­her poem.

“I wrote some little books;
I said some little says;
I preached a little pre-e-each;
I lit a little blaze;
I made—­things—­pleasant—­in one—­little—­place.”

She ran down a most contented little trip, with repeats and returns, in a G-octave, for the last line.  Then she rolled up a bundle of shirts in a square pillow-case, gave it its accolade, and pressed it down into the basket.

“How do you suppose, Ruth, we shall manage the town-meetings?  Do you believe they will be as nice as this?  Where shall we get our little inspirations, after we have come out of all our corners?”

“We won’t do it,” said Ruth, quietly, shaking out one of mother’s nightcaps, and speaking under the disadvantage of her private knowledge.

“I think they ought to let us vote just once,” said Barbara; “to say whether we ever would again.  I believe we’re in danger of being put upon now, if we never were before.”

“It isn’t fair,” said Ruth, with her eyes up out of the window at Harry, who made noiseless motion of clapping his hands.  How could she tell what Barbara would say next, or how she would like it when she knew?