She also became expert in that other fine art of condensing work, and making it move in easy grooves.  Her tea things she washed with her breakfast things, just setting the cups and plates in the sink for the night, pouring a dipper full of boiling water over them.  There was no silver to care for, no delicate glass or valuable china; the very simplicity of apparatus made the house an easy one to keep.  Clover was kept busy, for simplify as you will, providing for the daily needs of two persons does take time; but she liked her cares and rarely felt tired.  The elastic and vigorous air seemed to build up her forces from moment to moment, and each day’s fatigues were more than repaired by each night’s rest, which is the balance of true health in living.

Little pleasures came from time to time.  Christmas Day they spent with the Hopes, who from first to last proved the kindest and most helpful of friends to them.  The young men from the High Valley were there also, and the day was brightly kept,—­from the home letters by the early mail to the grand merry-making and dance with which it wound up.  Everybody had some little present for everybody else.  Mrs. Wade sent Clover a tall india-rubber plant in a china pot, which made a spire of green in the south window for the rest of the winter; and Clover had spent many odd moments and stitches in the fabrication of a gorgeous Mexican-worked sideboard cloth for the Hopes.

But of all Clover’s offerings the one which pleased her most, as showing a close observation of her needs, came from Geoff Templestowe.  It was a prosaic gift, being a wagon-load of pinon wood for the fire; but the gnarled, oddly twisted sticks were heaped high with pine boughs and long trails of red-fruited kinnikinnick to serve as a Christmas dressing, and somehow the gift gave Clover a peculiar pleasure.

“How dear of him!” she thought, lifting one of the big pinon logs with a gentle touch; “and how like him to think of it!  I wonder what makes him so different from other people.  He never says fine flourishing things like Thurber Wade, or abrupt, rather rude things like Clarence, or inconsiderate things like Phil, or satirical, funny things like the doctor; but he’s always doing something kind.  He’s a little bit like papa, I think; and yet I don’t know.  I wish Katy could have seen him.”

Life at St. Helen’s in the winter season is never dull; but the gayest fortnight of all was when, late in January, the High Valley partners deserted their duties and came in for a visit to the Hopes.  All sorts of small festivities had been saved for this special fortnight, and among the rest, Clover and Phil gave a party.

“If you can squeeze into the dining-room, and if you can do with just cream-toast for tea,” she explained, “it would be such fun to have you come.  I can’t give you anything to eat to speak of, because I haven’t any cook, you know; but you can all eat a great deal of dinner, and then you won’t starve.”