“I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have to pay anywhere else,” she said, simply.  And Miss Kirkbright as simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so.

“If you don’t need the pay, she needs the payment,” she said.

Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it.  “Sometime or other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it back,” she said.  “When she has come to understand, she will know that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can possibly gratify her mother in.”

There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely’s kitchen, in Desire’s library; all over the house, wherever there was any little care to take, any service to render.  Mrs. Argenter did not miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie was rarely gone long at a time.  She was always ready at twilight to play backgammon, or a game of what she called “skin-deep chess,” for her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess in real, deep earnest.  Sylvie brought her sewing, also,—­work for Neighbor Street it was, mostly,—­into the gray parlor, and “sewed for two,” on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy might be going on in the room, and Mrs. Argenter might have the content of seeing it.

On the Wednesday evenings recurred the delightful “Read-and-Talk,” when the Ingrahams came, and Bel Bree, and a dozen or so more of the “other girls”; when on the big table treasures of picture, map, stereoscope and story were brought forth; when they traversed far countries, studied in art-galleries and frescoed churches, traced back old historic associations; did not hurry or rush, but stayed in place after place, at point after point, looking it all thoroughly up, enjoying it like people who could take the world in the leisure of years.  And as they did not have the actual miles to go over, the standing about to do, and the fatigues to sleep between, they could “work in the ground fast,” like Hamlet, or any other spirit.  Their hours stood for months; their two months had given them already winters and summers of enchantment.

Hazel Ripwinkley, and very often Ada Geoffrey, was here at these travelling parties.  Ada had all her mother’s resources of books, engravings, models, specimens, at her command; she would come with a carriage-full.  Sometimes the library was Rome for an evening, with its Sistine Raphaels, its curious relics and ornaments, its Coliseum and St. Peter’s in alabaster, its views of tombs, and baths, and temples.  Sometimes it was Venice; again it was transformed into a dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or fac-simile,—­even a mummied finger and a scaraboeus ring.