They were left to their uninterrupted feminine speculations, for Mr. Holabird had put on his hat and coat again, and gone off west over to see his father; and Stephen had “piled” out into the kitchen, to communicate his delight to Winifred, with whom he was on terms of a kind of odd-glove intimacy, neither of them having in the house any precisely matched companionship.

This ought to have been foreseen, and an embargo put on; for it led to trouble.  By the time the green holland shades were apportioned to their new places, and an approximate estimate reached of the whole number of windows to be provided, Winny had made up her gregarious mind that she could not give up her town connection, and go out to live in “such a fersaakunness”; and as any remainder of time is to Irish valuation like the broken change of a dollar, when the whole can no longer be counted on, she gave us warning next morning at breakfast that she “must just be lukkin out fer a plaashe.”

“But,” said mother, in her most conciliatory way, “it must be two or three months, Winny, before we move, if we do go; and I should be glad to have you stay and help us through.”

“Ah, sure, I’d do annything to hilp yiz through; an’ I’m sure, I taks an intheresht in yiz ahl, down to the little cat hersel’; an’ indeed I niver tuk an intheresht in anny little cat but that little cat; but I couldn’t go live where it wud be so loahnsome, an’ I can’t be out oo a plaashe, ye see.”

It was no use talking; it was only transposing sentences; she “tuk a graat intheresht in us, an’ sure she’d do annything to hilp us, but she must just be lukkin out fer hersel’.”  And that very day she had the kitchen scrubbed up at a most unwonted hour, and her best bonnet on,—­a rim of flowers and lace, with a wide expanse—­of ungarnished head between it and the chignon it was supposed to accommodate,—­and took her “afternoon out” to search for some new situation, where people were subject neither to sickness nor removals nor company nor children nor much of anything; and where, under these circumstances, and especially if there were “set tubs, and hot and cold water,” she would probably remain just about as long as her “intheresht” would not allow of her continuing with us.

A kitchen exodus is like other small natural commotions,—­sure to happen when anything greater does.  When the sun crosses the line we have a gale down below.

“Now what shall we do?” asked Mrs. Holabird, forlornly, coming back into the sitting-room out of that vacancy in the farther apartments which spreads itself in such a still desertedness of feeling all through the house.

“Just what we’ve done before, motherums!” said Barbara, more bravely than she felt.  “The next one is somewhere.  Like Tupper’s ’wife of thy youth,’ she must be ‘now living upon the earth.’  In fact, I don’t doubt there’s a long line of them yet, threaded in and out among the rest of humanity, all with faces set by fate toward our back door.  There’s always a coming woman, in that direction at least.”