In the book that binds up this story, there is but the turn of a leaf between them.  A great many of us may be as near as that to each other in the telling of the world’s story, who never get the leaf turned over, or between whom the chapters are divided, with never a connecting word.

The Ingrahams moved into Boston in the early summer.  It was July when Bel came down from the hill-country with Aunt Blin.

CHAPTER IX.

INHERITANCE.

Do you remember somebody else who lives in Boston?  Have you heard of the old house in Greenley Street, and Uncle Titus Oldways, and Desire Ledwith, who came home with him after her mother and sisters went off to Europe, and something had touched her young life that had left for a while an ache after it?  Do you know Rachel Froke, and the little gray parlor, and the ferns, and the ivies, and the canary,—­and the old, dusty library, with its tall, crowded shelves, and the square table in the midst, where Uncle Oldways sat?  All is there still, except Uncle Oldways.  The very year that had been so busy elsewhere, with its rushing minutes that clashed out events and changes as moving atoms clash out heat—­that had brought to pass all that it has taken more than a hundred pages for me to tell,—­that had drawn toward one centre and focus, whither, as into a great whirling maelstrom of life, so many human affairs and interests are continually drifting, the far-apart persons that were to be the persons of one little history,—­this same year had lifted Uncle Titus up.  Out of his old age, out of his old house,—­out from among his books, where he thought and questioned and studied, into the youth and vigor to which, underneath the years, he had been growing; into the knowledges that lie behind and beyond all books and Scriptures; into the house not made with hands, the Innermost, the Divine.  Not away; I do not believe that.  Lifted up, in the life of the spirit, if only taken within.

Outside,—­just a little outside, for she loved him, and her life had grown into his and into his home,—­Desire remained, in this home that he had given her.

People talked about her, eagerly, curiously.  They said she was a great heiress.  Her mother and Mrs. Megilp had written letters to her overflowing with a mixture of sentiment and congratulation, condolence and delight.  They wanted her to come abroad at once, now, and join them.  What was there, any longer, to prevent?

Desire wrote back to them that she did not think they understood.  There was no break, she said; there was to be no beginning again.  She had come into Uncle Titus’s living with him; he had let her do that, and he had made it so that she could stay.  She was not going to leave him now.  She would as soon have robbed him of his money and run away, while the handling of his money had been his own.  It was but mere handling that made the difference. Himself was not dependent on his breath.  And it was himself that she was joined with.  “How can people turn their backs on people so?” She broke off with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion.