“O, I can practise,” Ruth said, cheerily.  “It will be so bright out there, and the mornings will be so early!”

“That’s just what they won’t be, particularly,” said Barbara, “seeing we’re going ‘west over.’”

“Well, then, the afternoons will be long.  It is all the same,” said Ruth.  That was the best she could do.

“Mother,” said Rosamond, “I’ve been thinking.  Get grandfather to have some of the floors stained.  I think rugs, and English druggets, put down with brass-headed nails, in the middle, are delightful.  Especially for a country house.”

“It seems, then, we are going?”

Nobody had even raised a question of that.

Nobody raised a question when Mr. Holabird came in.  He himself raised none.  He sat and listened to all the propositions and corollaries, quite as one does go through the form of demonstration of a geometrical fact patent at first glance.

“We can have a cow,” mother repeated.

“Or a dog, at any rate,” put in Stephen, who found it hard to get a hearing.

“You can have a garden, father,” said Barbara.  “It’s to be near to the parcel of ground that Rufus gave to his son Stephen.”

“I don’t like to have you quote Scripture so,” said father, gravely.

“I don’t,” said Barbara.  “It quoted itself.  And it isn’t there either.  I don’t know of a Rufus in all sacred history.  And there aren’t many in profane.”

“Somebody was the ‘father of Alexander and Rufus’; and there’s a Rufus ‘saluted’ at the end of an epistle.”

“Ruth is sure to catch one, if one’s out in Scripture.  But that isn’t history; that’s mere mention.”

“We can ask the girls to come ‘over’ now, instead of ‘down,’” suggested Rosamond, complacently.

Barbara smiled.

“And we can tell the girl to come ‘over,’ instead of ‘up,’ when she’s to fetch us home from a tea-drinking That will be one of the ‘handy’ things.”

“Girl! we shall have a man, if we have a garden.”  This was between the two.

“Mayhap,” said Barbara.  “And perlikely a wheel-barrow.”

“We shall all have to remember that it will only be living there instead of here,” said father, cautiously, putting up an umbrella under the rain of suggestion.

The umbrella settled the question of the weather, however.  There was no doubt about it after that.  Mother calculated measurements, and it was found out, between her and the girls, that the six muslin curtains in our double town parlor would be lovely for the six windows in the square Beaman best room.  Also that the parlor carpet would make over, and leave pieces for rugs for some of our delightful stained floors.  The little tables, and the two or three brackets, and the few pictures, and other art-ornaments, that only “strinkled,” Barbara said, in two rooms, would be charmingly “crowsy” in one.  And up stairs there would be such nice space for cushioning and flouncing, and making upholstery out of nothing, that you couldn’t do here, because in these spyglass houses the sleeping-rooms were all bedstead, and fireplace, and closet doors.