Yet Hazel Ripwinkley thought they could be; thought, in her straightforward, uncounting simplicity, that it was just the natural, obvious, beautiful thing to do, to take her home—­into a real home—­into pleasant family life; where things would not crowd; where she could be mothered and sistered, as girls ought to be, when there are so many nice places in the world, and not so many people in them as there might be.  When there could be so much visiting, and spare rooms kept always in everybody’s house, why should not somebody who needed to, just come in and stay?  What were the spare places made for?

“We might have Sulie for this winter,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at last.  “They would let her come to us for that time; and it would be a change for her, and leave a place for others.  Then if anything made it impossible for us to do more, we should not have raised an expectation to be disappointed.  And if we can and ought to do more, it will be shown us by that time more certainly.”

She asked Miss Craydocke about it, when she came home from Z——­ that fall.  She had been away a good deal lately; she had been up to Z——­ to two weddings,—­Leslie Goldthwaite’s and Barbara Holabird’s.  Now she was back again, and settled down.

Miss Craydocke thought it a good thing wisely limited.

“Sulie needs to be with older girls; there is no one in the Home to be companion to her; the children are almost all little.  A winter here would be a blessing to her!”

“But the change again, if she should have to make it?” suggested Mrs. Ripwinkley.

“Good things don’t turn to bad ones because you can’t have them any more.  A thing you’re not fit for, and never ought to have had, may; but a real good stays by; it overflows all the rest.  Sulie Praile’s life could never be so poor again, after a winter here with you, as it might be if she had never had it.  If you’d like her, let her come, and don’t be a bit afraid.  We’re only working by inches, any of us; like the camel’s-hair embroiderers in China.  But it gets put together; and it is beautiful, and large, and whole, somewhere.”

“Miss Craydocke always knows,” said Hazel.

Nobody said anything again, about Uncle Titus.  A winter’s plan need not be referred to him.  But Hazel, in her own mind, had resolved to find out what was Uncle Titus’s, generally and theoretically; how free they were to be, beyond winter plans and visits of weeks; how much scope they might have with this money and this house, that seemed so ample to their simple wants, and what they might do with it and turn it into, if it came into their heads or hearts or consciences.

So one day she went in and sat down by him in the study, after she had accomplished some household errand with Rachel Froke.

Other people approached him with more or less of strategy, afraid of the tiger in him; Desire Ledwith faced him courageously; only Hazel came and nestled up beside him, in his very cage, as if he were no wild beast, after all.