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!"

[Illustration]

Mrs. Holabird's thinking was something like it.

"Five hundred dollars to worry about, for what is set down upon a few
square yards of 'out of doors.' And inside of that, a great contriving
and going without, to put something warm underfoot over the sixteen
square feet that we live on most!"

She had almost a mind to pull up the blinds again; it was such a very
little matter, the bit of new carpet, after all.

"How do I know what they were thinking?" Never mind. People do know,
or else how do they ever tell stories? We know lots of things that we
_don't_ tell all the time. We don't stop to think whether we know
them or not; but they are underneath the things we feel, and the
things we do.

Grandfather came in, and said over the same old stereotypes. He had a
way of saying them, so that we knew just what was coming, sentence
after sentence. It was a kind of family psalter. What it all meant
was, "I've looked in to see you, and how you are getting along. I do
think of you once in a while." And our worn-out responses were, "It's