“Why shouldn’t there be,” Ray said, with appetizing emphasis, “a place to buy cup cake, and composition cake, and sponge cake, tender and rich, made with eggs instead of ammonia?  Why shouldn’t there be pies with sweet butter-crust crisp and good like mother’s, and nice wholesome little puddings?  Everybody knew that since the war, when the confectioners began to economize in their materials and double their prices at the same time, there was nothing fit to buy and call cake in the city.  Why shouldn’t somebody begin again, honest?  And here, where they didn’t count upon outrageous profits, why couldn’t it be as well as not?  When there was a good thing to be had in one place, other places would have to keep up.  It would make a difference everywhere, sooner or later.”

“And all these girls to be learning a business that they could set up anywhere!” said Hazel Ripwinkley.  “Everybody eats!  Just a new thing, if it’s only new trash, sells for a while; and these new, old-fashioned, grandmother’s cupboard things,—­why, people would just swarm after them!  Cooks never knew how, and ladies didn’t have time.  Don’t forget, Luclarion, the bright yellow ginger pound-cake that we used to have up at Homesworth!  Everything was so good at Homesworth—­the place was named out of comforts!  Why don’t you call it the Homesworth Bakery?  That would be double-an-tender,—­eh, Lukey!”

Marion Kent made a beautiful silk quilt for Ray Ingraham, out of her sea-green and buff dresses, and had given it to her for a wedding-present.  For the one only time as she did so, she spoke her heart out upon that which they had both perfectly understood, but had never alluded to.

“You know, Ray, just as I do, what might have been, and I want you to know that I’m contented, and there isn’t a grudge in my heart.  You and Frank have both been too much to me for that.  I can see how it was, though.  It was a hand’s turn once.  But I went my way and you kept quietly on.  It was the real woman, not the sham one, that he wanted for a wife.  It doesn’t trouble me now; it’s all right; and when it might have troubled me, it didn’t add a straw’s weight.  It fell right off from me.  You can’t suffer all through with more than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear.  I knew I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more than another?  It was what I had let go out of the world, Ray, that made the whole world a prison and a punishment.  I couldn’t have taken a happiness, if it had come to me.  All I wanted was work and forgiveness.”

“Dear Marion, how certainly you must know you are forgiven, by the spirit that is in you!  And for happiness, dear, there is a Forever that is full of it!  I don’t think it is any one thing,—­not even any one marrying.”

So the two kissed each other, and went down into the other house—­Luclarion’s.

That had been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork stitchery,—­to the young girls this afternoon.