A. D. T. Whitney

“ I don't see what is to become of us, unless—and I wonder if maybe that isn't it?—we just do two or three rather right things in a no-particular sort of a way."
"Barbara, how nice you are!" cried Ruth.
"No. I'm a thorn. Don't touch me."
"We never have company when we are having sewing done," said Mrs. Holabird. "We can always manage that."
"I don't want to play Box and Cox," said Rosamond.
"That's the beauty of you, Rosa Mundi!" said Barbara, warmly. "You don't want to play anything. That's where you'll come out sun-clear and diamond bright!" ”

“ It is more a woman's way.
The maples were in their gold and vermilion now, and the round masses of the ash were shining brown; we filled the vases with their leaves, and pressed away more in all the big books we could confiscate, and hunted frosted ferns in the wood-edge, and had beautiful pine blazes morning and evening in the brown room, and began to think how pleasant, for many cosey things, the winter was going to be, out here at Westover.
"How nicely we could keep Halloween," said Ruth, "round this great open chimney! What a row of nuts we could burn!"
"So we will," said Rosamond. ”

“ Ruth's fingers had a little easy, gladsome knack at music; and I suppose sometimes it was only Ruth herself who realized how thoroughly the fingers earned the privilege of the rest of her bodily presence. She did not mind; she was as happy playing as Rosamond and Barbara dancing; it was all fair enough; everybody must be wanted for something; and Ruth knew that her music was her best thing. She wished and meant it to be; Ruth had plans in her head which her fingers were to carry out. ”

“ When we brought our furniture from the house in the town, the large front rooms and the open halls used it up so, that it seemed as if there were hardly anything left but bedsteads and washstands and bureaus,—the very things that make up-stairs look so very bedroomy. And we wanted pretty places to sit in, as girls always do. Rosamond and Barbara made a box-sofa, fitted luxuriously with old pew-cushions sewed together, and a crib mattress cut in two and fashioned into seat and pillows; and a packing-case dressing-table, flounced with a skirt of white cross-barred muslin that Ruth had outgrown. ”

“ There was nothing to say even. There never is anything to say about the greatest things. People can only name the bare, grand, awful fact, and say, "It was tremendous," or "startling," or "magnificent," or "terrible," or "sad." How little we could really say about the gale, even now that it was over! We could repeat that this and that tree were blown down, and such a barn or house unroofed; but we could not get the real wonder of it—the thing that moved us to try to talk it over—into any words.
"He seemed so well this afternoon," said Rosamond.
"I don't think he was quite well," said Ruth. ”

“ Barbara gave us currant-jelly; she was a stingy Barbara about that jelly, and counted her jars; and when father and Stephen came in, there was the little dinner of three covers, and a peach-pie of Saturday's making on the side-board, and the green screen up before the stove again, and the baking-pan safe in the pantry sink, with hot water and ammonia in it.
"Mother," said Barbara, "I feel as if we had got rid of a menagerie!"
"It is the girl that makes the kitchen," said Ruth.
"And then the kitchen that has to have the girl," said Mrs. Holabird. ”

“ A fire in the country, in the dead of night, to those first awakened to the knowledge of it, is a stealthily fearful, horribly triumphant thing. Not a voice nor a bell smiting the air, where all will soon be outcry and confusion; only the fierce, busy diligence of the blaze, having all its own awful will, and making steadfast headway against the sleeping skill of men.
We all put on some warm things, and went right over.
Father found Mr. Marchbanks, with his gardener, at the back of the house, playing upon the scorching frames of the conservatory building with the garden engine. ”

“ When Marmaduke Wharne first saw John Hautayne, he put his hand upon his shoulder, and held him so, while he looked him hardly in the face.
"Do you think you deserve her, John?" the old man said. And John looked him back, and answered straightly, "No!" It was not mere apt and effective reply; there was an honest heartful on the lips and in the eyes; and Leslie's old friend let his hand slip down along the strong, young arm, until it grasped the answering hand, and said again,—
"Perhaps, then, John,—you'll do!"
"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" ”

“ Ruth added.
"O, Mrs. Ingleside does all sorts of things. She has that sort of position. It's as independent as the other. High moral and high social can do anything. It's the betwixt and between that must be careful."
"What a miserably negative set we are, in such a positive state of the world!" cried Barbara. "Except Ruth's music, there isn't a specialty among us; we haven't any views; we're on the mean-spirited side of the Woman Question; 'all woman, and no question,' as mother says; we shall never preach, nor speech, nor leech; we can't be magnificent, and we won't be common! ”

“ Miss Trixie could appreciate homely cleverness; darning of carpets and covering of old furniture; she could darn a carpet herself, so as almost to improve upon—certainly to supplant—the original pattern. Yet she always had a fresh amazement for all our performances, as if nothing notable had ever been done before, and a personal delight in every one of our improvements, as if they had been her own. "We're just as cosey as we can be, already,—it isn't that; but we want somebody to tell us how cosey we are. Let's get Miss Trixie to-day," says Barbara. ”

“ The dark stained floor, showing clean, undefaced margins,—the new, pretty drugget,—the freshly clad, broad old sofa,—the high wainscoted walls, painted in oak and walnut colors, and varnished brightly,—the ceiling faintly tinted with buff,—the buff holland shades to the windows,—the dresser-closet built out into the room on one side, with its glass upper-halves to the doors, showing our prettiest china and a gleam of silver and glass,—the two or three pretty engravings in the few spaces for them,—O, it was a great deal too nice to take for a kitchen. ”

“ Ingleside," said Ruth, walking closer to Leslie as she spoke.
"And Mrs. Ingleside is like Miss Craydocke: and—I didn't suppose I should ever find many more of them, but they're counting up," said Dakie Thayne. "There's a pretty good piece of the world salted, after all."
"If there really is any best society," pursued Leslie, "it seems to me it ought to be, not for keeping people out, but for getting everybody in as fast as it can, like the kingdom of heaven." ”

“ Nobody knows the comfort that we Holabirds took, though, in those autumn days, after all this was over, in our home; feeling every bright, comfortable minute, that our home was our own. "It is so nice to have it to love grandfather by," said Ruth, like a little child.
"Everything is so pleasant," said Barbara, one sumptuous morning. "I've so many nice things that I can choose among to do. I feel like a bee in a barrel of sugar. ”

“ Such things are sure to be stupid unless everybody is really interested."
Rosamond stood in the hall-door, as she went down the steps and away. At the same moment, Barbara, flushed with an evidently hurried walk, came in. "Why! what makes you so red, Rose?" she said.
"Somebody has been snubbing somebody," replied Rose, holding her royal color, like her namesake, in the midst of a cool repose. "And I don't quite know whether it is Olivia Marchbanks or I."
"A color-question between Rose and Barberry!" said Ruth. "What have you been doing, Barbie? Why didn't you stay to tea?" ”

“ Neighborhoods used to go on in that simple fashion; life used to be "co-operative."
Mother said something like that after Leslie and Harry had gone away.
"Only you can't get them into it again," objected Rosamond. "It's a case of Humpty Dumpty. The world will go on."
"One world will," said Barbara. "But the world is manifold. You can set up any kind of a monad you like, and a world will shape itself round it. You've just got to live your own way, and everything that belongs to it will be sure to join on. You'll have a world before you know it. ”

“ It's just like going down stairs to get these presents. The very minute I see a corner of one of those white paper parcels, don't I begin to look every way, and say all sorts of things in a hurry? Wouldn't I like to turn my back and run off if I could? Why don't they put them under the sofa, or behind the door, I wonder?"
"After all—" began Rosamond, still with the questioning inflection.
"After all—" said Barbara, "there was the fire. That, luckily, was something else!"
"Does there always have to be a fire?" asked Ruth, laughing. ”

“ Barbara, if she really might have been dressed, would be as likely as not to be comfortable in a sack and skirt and her "points,"—as she called her black prunella shoes, that were weak at the heels and going at the sides, and kept their original character only by these embellishments upon the instep,—and to have dumped herself down on the broad lower stair in the hall, just behind the green blinds of the front entrance, with a chapter to finish in some irresistible book, or a pair of stockings to mend. ”

“ How wonderfully our Halloween party was turning out!
And the turning-out is almost the best part of anything; the time when things are getting together, in the beautiful prosperous way they will take, now and then, even in this vexed world.
There was our lovely little supper-table all ready. People who have servants enough, high-trained, to do these things while they are entertaining in the drawing-room, don't have half the pleasure, after all, that we do, in setting out hours beforehand, and putting the last touches and taking the final satisfaction before we go to dress. ”

“ It began to grow dark. We put a bright, steady light in the brown room, to shine through the south window, and show father that we were all right; directly after a lamp was set in Grandfather Holabird's north porch. This little telegraphy was all we could manage; we were as far apart as if the Atlantic were between us.
"Will they be frightened about you at home?" asked Ruth of Leslie.
"I think not. They will know we should go in somewhere, and that there would be no way of getting out again. People must be caught everywhere, just as it happens, to-night." ”

“ To be sure, we had coffee and bread and butter and cold ham for dinner that day; and we took our tea "standed round," as Barbara said; and the dishes were put away in the covered sink; we knew where we could shirk righteously and in good order, when we could not accomplish everything; but there was neither huddle nor hurry; we were as quiet and comfortable as we could be. Even Rosamond was satisfied with the very manner; to be composed is always to be elegant. Anybody might have come in and lunched with us; anybody might have shared that easy, chatty cup of tea. ”

“ And going to the door with her, she met grandfather and the cane coming in.
There was time enough for Mrs. Holabird to pull down the blinds, and for Ruth to take a long, thinking look out from under hers, through the sash of window left unshaded; for old Mr. Holabird and his cane were slow; the more awful for that.
Ruth thought to herself, "Yes; there is plenty of room out of doors; and yet people crowd so! I wonder why we can't live bigger!" ”

“ Aunt Roderick has very good practical eyes; but no sentiment whatever. "It seems to me, Barbara, that you are throwing away your opportunities," she said, plainly.
Barbara looked up with a face of bold unconsciousness. She was brought to bay, now; Aunt Roderick could exasperate her, but she could not touch the nerve, as dear Miss Craydocke could.
"I always am throwing them away," said Barbara. "It's my fashion. I never could save corners. I always put my pattern right into the middle of my piece, and the other half never comes out, you see. ”

“ But Barbara walked round to her place at the table with a very great dignity.
People think that young folks can only have properly arranged and elaborately provided good times; with Germania band pieces, and bouquets and ribbons for the German, and oysters and salmon-salad and sweatmeat-and-spun-sugar "chignons"; at least, commerce games and bewitching little prizes. Yet when lives just touch each other naturally, as it were,—dip into each other's little interests and doings, and take them as they are, what a multiplication-table of opportunities it opens up! ”

“ Elinor Hadden's puffs and French-blue bands, and bits of embroidery looked, for the stitches somebody had put into them, and the weary starching and ironing and perking out that must be done for them, beside the simple hem and the one narrow basque ruffling of Leslie's cambric morning-dress, which had its color and its set-off in itself, in the bright little carnations with brown stems that figured it. It was "trimmed in the piece"; and that was precisely what Leslie had said when she chose it. She "dodged" a great deal in the mere buying. ”