“Could you teach something?  Could you keep a little school?”

“I’ve thought about it.  But a person must know ever to much, nowadays, to keep even the least little school.  They want Kindergartens, and all the new plans, that I haven’t learnt.  And it’s just so about music.  You must be scientific; and all I really know is a few little songs.  But I can dance well, Mr. Sherrett.  I could teach that.”

There was something pathetically amusing in this bringing to market of her one exquisite accomplishment, learned for pleasure, and the suggestion of it at this moment, as she sat in her strange black dress, with the pale, worn look on her face, in the home so shadowed by heavy trouble, and about to pass away from their possession.

“You will be sure to do something, I see,” said Mr. Sherrett.  “Yes, I think you had better have a quiet little home.  It will be a centre to work from, and something to work for.  You can easily furnish it from this house.  Whatever has to be done, you could certainly be allowed such things as you might make a schedule of.  Would you like me to talk for you with Mr. Cardwell, and have something arranged?”

“O, if you would!  Mother dreads the very sound of Mr. Cardwell’s name, and the thought of business.  She cannot bear it now.  But your advice would be so different!”

Sylvie knew that it would go far with Mrs. Argenter that Mr. Howland Sherrett, in the relation of neighbor and friend, should plan and suggest for them, rather than Mr. Richard Cardwell, a stranger and mere man of business, should come and tell them things that must be.

“I’m afraid you’ll think I don’t realize things, I’ve planned and imagined so much,” Sylvie began again, “but I couldn’t help thinking.  It is all I have had to do.  There’s a little house in Upper Dorbury that always seemed to me so pretty and pleasant; and nobody lives there now.  At least, it was all shut up the last time I drove by.  The house with the corner piazza and the green side yard, and the dark red roof sloping down, just off the road in the shady turn beside the bank that only leads to two other little houses beyond.  Do you know?”

Mr. Sherrett did know.  They were three houses built by members of the same family, some years ago, upon an old village homestead property.  Two of them had passed into other hands; one—­this one—­remained in its original ownership, but had been rented of late; since the war, in which the proprietor had made money, and with it had bought a city residence in Chester Park.

“You see we must go where things will be convenient.  We can’t ride round after them any more.  And we could get a girl up there, as other people do, for general housework.  I’m afraid mother wouldn’t quite like being in the village, but of course there can’t be anything that she would quite like, now.  And we aren’t really separate people any longer; at least, we don’t belong to the separate kind of people, and I couldn’t bear to be lonesomely separate.  It’s good to belong to some kind of people; isn’t it?”