Miss Trixie Spring came over and spent days with us, as of old; and when the house looked sweet and pleasant with the shaded summer light, and was full of the gracious summer freshness, she would look round and shake her head, and say, “It’s just as beautiful as it can be.  And it’s a dumb shame.  Don’t tell me!”

Uncle Roderick was going to “take in” the old homestead with his share, and that was as much as he cared about; Uncle John was used to nothing but stocks and railway shares, and did not want “encumbrances”; and as to keeping it as estate property and paying rent to the heirs, ourselves included,—­nobody wanted that; they would rather have things settled up.  There would always be questions of estimates and repairs; it was not best to have things so in a family.  Separate accounts as well as short ones, made best friends.  We knew they all thought father was unlucky to have to do with in such matters.  He would still be the “limited” man of the family.  It would take two thirds of his inheritance to pay off those old ’57 debts.

So we took our lovely Westover summer days as things we could not have any more of.  And when you begin to feel that about anything, it would be a relief to have had the last of it.  Nothing lasts always; but we like to have the forever-and-ever feeling, however delusive.  A child hates his Sunday clothes, because he knows he cannot put them on again on Monday.

With all our troubles, there was one pleasure in the house,—­Arctura.  We had made an art-kitchen; now we were making a little poem of a serving-maiden.  We did not turn things over to her, and so leave chaos to come again; we only let her help; we let her come in and learn with us the nice and pleasant ways that we had learned.  We did not move the kitchen down stairs again; we were determined not to have a kitchen any more.

Arctura was strong and blithe; she could fetch and carry, make fires, wash dishes, clean knives and brasses, do all that came hardest to us; and could do, in other things, with and for us, what she saw us do.  We all worked together till the work was done; then Arctura sat down in the afternoons, just as we did, and read books, or made her clothes.  She always looked nice and pretty.  She had large dark calico aprons for her work; and little white bib-aprons for table-tending and dress-up; and mother made for her, on the machine, little linen collars and cuffs.

We had a pride in her looks; and she knew it; she learned to work as delicately as we did.  When breakfast or dinner was ready, she was as fit to turn round and serve as we were to sit down; she was astonished herself, at ways and results that she fell in with and attained.

“Why, where does the dirt go to?” she would exclaim.  “It never gethers anywheres.”

“GATHERS,—­anywhere” Rosamond corrected.

Arctura learned little grammar lessons, and other such things, by the way.  She was only “next” below us in our family life; there was no great gulf fixed.  We felt that we had at least got hold of the right end of one thread in the social tangle.  This, at any rate, had come out of our year at Westover.