she could hardly have been spared if she had had to bring mere idle
work. She sewed in gathers upon the shirts for mother, while Delia cut
out her pretty material in a style she had not seen. If we had had
grasshopper parties all summer before, this was certainly a bee, and I
think we all really liked it just as well as the other.

We had the comfort of mother's great, airy room, now, as we had never
even realized it before. Everybody had a window to sit at;
green-shaded with closed blinds for the most part; but that is so
beautiful in summer, when the out-of-doors comes brimming in with
scent and sound, and we know how glorious it is if we choose to open
to it, and how glorious it is going to be when we do throw all wide in
the cooling afternoon.

"How glad I am we _have_ to have busy weeks sometimes!" said Ruth,
stopping the little "common-sense" for an instant, while she tossed a
long flouncing over her sewing-table. "I know now why people who
never do their own work are obliged to go away from home for a change.
It must be dreadfully same if they didn't. I like a book full of
different stories!"

Lucilla Waters lives down in the heart of the town. So does Leslie
Goldthwaite, to be sure; but then Mr. Goldthwaite's is one of the old,
old-fashioned houses that were built when the town was country, and
that has its great yard full of trees and flowers around it now; and
Mrs. Waters lives in a block, flat-face to the street, with nothing
pretty outside, and not very much in; for they have never been rich,
the Waterses, and Mr. Waters died ten years ago, when Lucilla was a
little child. Lucilla and her mother keep a little children's school;
but it was vacation now, of course.