“There ought to be,” said Desire, “some filtered process for these things; some way of sifting and certifying.  A bureau of mutual understanding between the ’real folks,’—­employers and employed.  I believe it might be.  There ought to be for this, and for many things, a fellowship organized, between women of different outward degree.  And something will happen, sooner or later, to bring it about.  A money crisis, perhaps, to throw these girls out of shop-employment, and to make heads of households look into ways of more careful managing.  A mutual need,—­or the seeing of it.  The need is now; these girls—­half of them—­want homes, more than anything; and the homes are suffering for the help of just such girls.”

“Why don’t you edit a paper, Desire?  The ‘Fellowship Register,’ or the ‘Domestic Intelligencer,’ or something!  And keep lists of all the nice, real housekeepers, and the nice, real, willing girls?”

“That isn’t a bad notion, Hazie.  Your notions never are.  May be that is what is waiting for you.  Just cover up that ‘raised Switzerland,’ will you, and bring it over here?  And roll up the ’Course of the Rhine,’ and set it in the corner.  There; now we may put out the gas.  Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?”

The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle Titus’s neck for the first time.  She often thought of it now, when they went up after the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their cheery breakfasts.  She liked to stop on just that step.  Nobody knew all it meant to her, when she did.  There are places in every dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone.

Yes, indeed.  Sylvie was very happy now.  All her pretty pictures, and little brackets, and her mother’s stands and vases in the gray parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual subtle message.  That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city house.  Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime, more was coming.  She could wait better than Rodney.  Because,—­she knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait.  How did Rodney know that?

It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent, boyish, yet most manly, letters.  And she kept answering, “You need not fear.  I think I understand Sylvie.  I can see.  If there were anything in the way, I would tell you.”

But at last she had to say,—­not, “I think I understand Sylvie,”—­but, “I understand girls, Rodney.  I am a woman, remember.  I have been a girl, and I have waited.  I have waited all my life.  The right girls can.”

And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it with a loving grasp between his hands again,—­