In three days, the like of which are the longest, the shortest days of life, the house had returned to the remnant of its old routine.  The place had been fumigated.  Lydia had placed in her bedroom everything that had belonged to the baby, had locked the door and had moved herself into Lizzie’s room.  Amos departed before dawn as usual with his dinner pail, stumbling like an old man, over the road.

The quarantine sign was on the house and no one but the undertaker, the doctor, Mrs. Norton and John Levine had been allowed to come to see the stricken little family, excepting the minister.  He, poor man, had babies of his own, and had been nervous during the few short minutes of the service.

Lydia and Lizzie put in the morning cleaning the cottage.  Never since they had lived in it had the little house been so spic and span.  At noon, they sat down to lunch in a splendor of cleanliness that made the place seem stranger than ever to them both.  Neither talked much.  At intervals, tears ran down old Lizzie’s wrinkled cheeks and Lydia looked at her wonderingly.  Lydia had not shed a tear.  But all the time her cheeks were scarlet, her hands were cold and trembled and her stomach ached.

“You must eat, childie.  You haven’t eat enough to keep a bird alive since—­since—­”

There was a bang on the door, and Lizzie trundled over to open it.

“For the Lord’s sake, Kent!”

Kent it was, big and rosy with his skates over his shoulders.  He walked into the living-room deliberately.

“Hello, Lydia,” he said, “I came out to see your Christmas presents.”

Lydia clasped her hands.  “Oh, Kent, I’m so glad!  But you can’t stay!  We’re quarantined.”

“What the seventeen thunder-bugs do I care,” returned Kent, gruffly, looking away from Lydia’s appealing eyes.

Lydia laughed, as she always did at Kent’s astonishing oaths.  At the sound of the laughter, old Lizzie gave a sigh as though some of her own tense nerves had relaxed.

“Now see here,” growled Kent, “they’ve got no business to shut you up this way.  You come out and skate for a while.  The wind’s blown the snow till there’s lots of clear places.  I got up here without much trouble.  We won’t meet anybody at this end of the lake.”

“Just the thing, quarantine or not!” exclaimed, Lizzie, briskly.  “And I’ll cook a surprise for the two of you.  Keep her out an hour, Kent.”

Lydia silently got into overcoat and leggings and pulled on her Tam o’ Shanter.  She brought her skates from the kitchen and the two children made their way to the lake shore.

It was a brilliant afternoon.  The vast white expanse of the lake was dotted with the flash of opals wherever the wind had exposed the ice to the winter sun.  Far down the lake toward the college shore, the flitting sails of ice-boats gleamed, and faint and far up the wind came the clear “cling-pling” of their steel runners.  The mercury was hovering around ten or twelve above zero as the fierce booming of the expanding ice attested.