It was chilly, and they had to go in; but they kept coming back to window and door, looking out through the closed sashes, and calling, “Now! now!  O, was there ever anything like that?”

At last it turned into a heavenly vision of still, far, shining waters; the earth and the pools upon it darkened, and the sky gathered up into itself the glory, and disclosed its own wider and diviner beauty.

A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like rocks along a shore.  Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, foaming, tossing.  Beyond, a rosy sea.  In it, little golden boats floated.  The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with saffron-touched blue.

So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and peace of their rushing and melting together.

After all that, they came back by a step and a word—­these mortal observers,—­to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs. Jeffords’ hospitality.

“Where should she put them?  Why, she was always ready.  To be sure, the front upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room enough!”

“There’s the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over the sittin’-room, and there’s my room!  I ain’t never put out!”

“But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be.”

“Don’t care!” said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly.  “There’s the kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in.  It’s all right.  Don’t you worry.”

“You never care; that’s the reason I do worry,” said Sylvie.

“I’ve learnt not to care,” said Mrs. Jeffords. “’Tain’t no use.  You must take things as they are.  They will be so, and you can’t help it.  If they fall right side up, well and good; if they’re wrong side up, let ’em lay.  And they ain’t wrong side up yet, I can tell you.  You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves.”

Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a long while.  “It was nice to be among people again,” she said, when the evening was over.

“So it is,” said Sylvie.  “But somehow I didn’t feel the difference the other way.  I think I always am among people.  At least it never seems to me as if they were very far off.  Next door mayn’t be exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in the world.  And the world wakes up all together every morning,—­that is, as fast as the morning gets round.”

With her “mayn’t be’s” and her “is’es,” Sylvie was unconsciously making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb damsel.