"The furniture's all right," said Sarah hastily. "Of course, this house doesn't look like Mrs. Emerson's. Her parlor looked as if everything in it had grown there and belonged there; this room looks as if we'd just bought the things and put them here. Maybe after we've lived here a long time, it'll look different, but there's no use tryin' to make my house look like Mrs. Emerson's or Mrs. Morton's." "Are your clothes as good as the other women's?" inquired David solicitously. "Suppose they're not," argued Sarah sturdily. "I'm not goin' to try to dress like other women. My clothes suit me, and that's enough." Sarah's sturdy independence pleased David, but like a good husband, he wanted his wife to look as well as other women. "Oughtn't you to have some jewelry, Sarah? Some rings and chains and--things of that sort?" he added vaguely. "David! David!" cried his wife half in anger, half in love. "Do you want to make me a laughing stock? My hands are not the kind for rings; and what would Molly and Annie say if they saw me wearin' jewelry? We've got enough things between us and our old friends without jewelry. Instead of rings, you can give me a check for the day nursery." Sarah was rolling up her work now and smiling softly. "Two weeks ago," she said, "it seemed as if everything was in a tangle just like this worsted gets sometimes. But I've picked and pulled and twisted, you might say, till I've straightened it out. You see, David, there's some things you can't understand till you get 'way off from them. As long as I was in this house, I thought I was out of place, but I hadn't been in the cottage long, till I saw that this house was just as much my home as the little cottage was. I never could have seen it, though, if I hadn't gone back to the old house." Wise Sarah! It was well for her that the club had changed its plan of work. She would never be able to write an analysis of _The Ring and the Book_, or throw an interpretative flashlight into the obscurity of _Red Cotton Night-Cap Country_, but like the knight of the Dark Tower, she had learned that "One taste of the old time sets all things right." ONE DAY IN SPRING According to the calendar, it was the last day of March, but for weeks the spirit of April and May had breathed on the face of the earth, and those who had memories of many springs declared that never before had there been such weather in the month of March.