debts, and beginning again, to try and earn the forty, and to feed and
clothe his family meanwhile.

Grandfather Holabird sent us down all our milk, and once a week, when
he bought his Sunday dinner, he would order a turkey for us. In the
summer, we had all the vegetables we wanted from his garden, and at
Thanksgiving a barrel of cranberries from his meadow. But these
obliged us to buy an extra half-barrel of sugar. For all these things
we made separate small change of thanks, each time, and were all the
more afraid of his noticing our new gowns or carpets.

"When you haven't any money, don't buy anything," was his stern
precept.

"When you're in the Black Hole, don't breathe," Barbara would say,
after he was gone.

But then we thought a good deal of Grandfather Holabird, for all. That
day, when he came in and astonished us so, we were all as busy and as
cosey as we could be.

Mrs. Holabird was making a rug of the piece of the new carpet that had
been cut out for the hearth, bordering it with a strip of shag.
Rosamond was inventing a feather for her hat out of the best of an old
black-cock plume, and some bits of beautiful downy white ones with
smooth tips, that she brought forth out of a box.

"What are they, Rose? And where did you get them?" Ruth asked,
wondering.