This time the development was a very busy Friday forenoon; in which the silver rubbing was omitted, and the dinner preparations put off,—­the man who came for “chores” detained for heavy lifting,—­the large dining-table turned up on edge and rolled into the back parlor, the sideboard brought in and put in the place of a sofa, which was wheeled to an obtuse angle with the fire-place,—­nine square yards of gray drugget, with a black Etruscan border, sent up by Mr. Scherman from Lovejoy’s, and tacked carefully down by seam and stripe, under Asenath’s personal direction; cradle, rocking-horse, baby-house, tin carts and picture-books removed from the nursery and arranged in the new quarters,—­the children themselves following back and forth untiringly with their one-foot-foremost hop over the stairs, and their hands clasping the rods of the balusters,—­some little shabby treasure always hugged in the spare arm, chairs and crickets, and the low table suited to their baby-chairs, at which they played and ate, transferred also; until Asenath stood with a sudden sadness in the deserted chamber, reduced to the regular bedroom furnishings, and looking dead and bleak with the little life gone out of it.

But the warm south sun was beaming full into the pretty room below, where the small possessors of a whole new, beautiful world were chattering and dancing with delight; and up here, by and by, the western shine would come to meet them at their bedtime, and the new moon and the star-twinkle would peep in upon their sleep.

With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it, and said to herself when all was done,—­

“How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all!  It isn’t nice for children to be put to sleep in the midst of the whole day’s muss!”

The final thing was done the next morning.  The carpenter came and put a little gate across the head of the short stairway which would now only be used as required between play-room and kitchen; the back stairway of the main house giving equal access on the other side to the parlor dining-room.  China closet and dumb waiter were luckily in that angle, also.

A second little railed gate barred baby trespass into the halls.  The sparrows were caged again.

“What would you have done if they hadn’t been?” asked Hazel Ripwinkley, speaking of the china closet and dumb waiter happening to be just as they were.  She had come over one morning with Miss Craydocke, for a nursery visit and to see the new arrangements.

“What should we have done if anything hadn’t been?” asked Asenath, in return.  “Everything always has been, somehow, in my life.  I don’t believe we have anything to do with the ‘ifs’ way back, do you, Miss Hapsie?  We couldn’t stop short of the ‘if’ out of which we came into the world,—­or the world came out of darkness!  I think that’s the very beauty of living.”