“Come, come, what’s the use of such a bother!” said the young man irritably.  “Mother knows that I’d carry the trunks up on Bald-Top before I’d let her touch them.  That’s the way it will always be with these city people, I suppose.  Everybody must jump and run the moment they speak.  Father’s right, and we’ll have to give up our old free-and-easy life and become porters and waiting-maids.”

“I’ve heard enough of that talk,” said Mrs. Atwood emphatically.  “Your father’s been like a drizzling northeaster all day.  Now I give you men-folks fair warning.  If you want any supper you must wake up and give me something better than grumbling.  I’m too hot and tired now to argue over something that’s been settled once for all.”

The “warning” had the desired effect, for Mrs. Atwood was the recognized head of the commissary department, and, as such, could touch the secret springs of motives that are rarely resisted.

The open kitchen windows were so near that Mildred could not help overhearing this family jar, and it added greatly to her depression.  She felt that they had not only lost their own home, but were also banishing the home feeling from another family.  She did but scant justice to Mrs. Atwood’s abundant supper, and went to her room at last with that most disagreeable of all impressions—­the sense of being an intruder.

The tired children were soon at rest, for their time of sleepless trouble was far distant.  Belle’s pretty head drooped also with the roses over the porch as the late twilight deepened.  To her and the little people the day had been rich in novelty, and the country was a wonderland of many and varied delights.  In the eyes of children the Garden of Eden survives from age to age.  Alas! the tendency to leave it survives also, and to those who remain, regions of beauty and mystery too often become angular farms and acres.

Mrs. Jocelyn and Mildred still more clearly illustrated the truth that the same world wears a different aspect as the conditions of life vary.  They were going out into the wilderness.  The river was a shining pathway, whose beauty was a mockery, for it led away from all that they loved best.  The farmhouse was a place of exile, and its occupants a strange, uncouth people with whom they felt that they would have nothing in common.  Mrs. Jocelyn merely looked forward to weeks of weary waiting until she could again join her husband, to whom in his despondency her heart clung with a remorseful tenderness.  She now almost wished that they had lived on bread and water, and so had provided against this evil day of long separation and dreary uncertainty.  Now that she could no longer rest in her old belief that there would be “some way” of tiding over every financial crisis, she became a prey to forebodings equally vague that there might be no way.  That her husband could spend day after day seeking employment, offering, too, to take positions far inferior to the one he had lost, was a truth that at first bewildered and then disheartened her beyond measure.  She felt that they must, indeed, have fallen on evil times when his services went a-begging.