Holabird’s weakness, when money was easy with him, to bring home straws like these to the home nest.  So we had, also, a good many nice books; for, one at a time, when there was no hurrying bill to be paid, they had not seemed much to buy; and in our brown room, where we sat every day, and where our ivies had kindly wonted themselves already to the broad, bright windows, there were stands and cases well filled, and a great round family table in the middle, whose worn cloth hid its shabbiness under the comfort of delicious volumes ready to the hand, among which, central of all, stood the Shekinah of the home-spirit,—­a tall, large-globed lamp that drew us cosily into its round of radiance every night.

Not these June nights though.  I will tell you presently what the June nights were at Westover.

We worked hard in those days, but we were right blithe about it.  We had at last got an Irish girl from “far down,”—­that is their word for the north country at home, and the north country is where the best material comes from,—­who was willing to air her ignorance in our kitchen, and try our Christian patience, during a long pupilage, for the modest sum of three dollars a week; than which “she could not come indeed for less,” said the friend who brought her.  “All the girls was gettin’ that.”  She had never seen dipped toast, and she “couldn’t do starched clothes very skilful”; but these things had nothing to do with established rates of wages.

But who cared, when it was June, and the smell of green grass and the singing of birds were in the air, and everything indoors was clean, and fresh with the wonderful freshness of things set every one in a new place?  We worked hard and we made it look lovely, if the things were old; and every now and then we stopped in the midst of a busy rush, at door or window, to see joyfully and exclaim with ecstasy how grandly and exquisitely Nature was furbishing up her beautiful old things also,—­a million for one sweet touches outside, for ours in.

“Westover is no longer an adverbial phrase, even qualifying the verb ‘to go,’” said Barbara, exultingly, looking abroad upon the family settlement, to which our new barn, rising up, added another building.  “It is an undoubted substantive proper, and takes a preposition before it, except when it is in the nominative case.”

Because of the cellar-kitchen, there was a high piazza built up to the sitting-room windows on the west, which gradually came to the ground-level along the front.  Under this was the woodshed.  The piazza was open, unroofed:  only at the front door was a wide covered portico, from which steps went down to the gravelled entrance.  A light low railing ran around the whole.

Here we had those blessed country hours of day-done, when it was right and lawful to be openly idle in this world, and to look over through the beautiful evening glooms to neighbor worlds, that showed always a round of busy light, and yet seemed somehow to keep holiday-time with us, and to be only out at play in the spacious ether.