would have to be cut up into little neck-scarfs. But sometimes, too, you
got them quite new. Papa knew about dry goods, luckily, and selected a
nice one.

Part of this was repulsive,--but, again, part of it attractive. We don't
expect to be the cheated ones ourselves.

The bell rang again, and this time Lieutenant Clarence Herbert entered
on tiptoe: not of expectation particularly, but he had a way of
tiptoeing which had been the fashion before he went to sea the last
time, and which he resumed on his return, without noticing that in the
mean time the fashion had gone by, and everybody stood straight and
square on his feet. The effect, like all just-gone-by fashions, was to
make him look ridiculous; and it required some self-control on our part
to do him the justice of remembering that he could be quite brilliant
when he pleased, was musical and sentimental. He had a good name, as I
sighed in recalling.

We talked on, and on, instinctively keeping near the ground, and hopping
from bough to bough of daily facts.

When they were both gone, we rejoiced, and went up-stairs again to our
work and our rocking. Laura hummed,--

"'The visit paid, with ecstasy we come,
As from a seven-years' transportation, home,
And there resume the unembarrassed brow,
Recovering what we lost, we know not how,'--

"What is it?--