She had not thought of it as sociable and friendly before. The thought seemed just to have come to her. She was quite cheerful-minded when she finished her letter to Cornelia Dunlap and neatly folded it. If she had but known, she was sorry for Cornelia who was not next door to a friendly little box. She made tea and sipped it, made golden toast and opened a foreign-looking box of some sort of jelly. While she ate slowly, she slowly made plans. No, she would not have a stay-all-the-time maid--yes, she would move her things into the room facing the next-door house. Until she got tired of watching the sociable thread of smoke, anyway. It had not occurred yet to Theodosia Baxter that she had not said a word to Cornelia Dunlap about going on their travels again. When it did occur, she suddenly laughed out aloud, but softly. "I forgot what I began that letter _for_! I never mentioned going away again! And now--I'm glad. Who wants to go off? 'East, west, hame's best.' Even a hame next door to a little dry-goods box." Of course there was the promise to let those funny kiddies whitewash her-- "It's a Baxter promise; don't try to get out of it, Theodosia Baxter," she said. The next noon she saw her dresses dangling from the neighboring clothesline. They were not successfully dangled; Miss Theodosia liked to see them hung with symmetry, all alike in a seemly row. The shirtwaists dangled also in unseemly attitudes. One hung by a single sleeve. But that was not all--a certain faint suggestion of something worse than lack of symmetry persisted in Miss Theodosia's mind. They had been especially travel-stained, soiled; they had still an air of soil and travel-stain. They didn't look clean! Miss Theodosia groaned. "It may be blueing streaks," she said, but there was little comfort in blueing streaks. She got her opera glasses and peered through them at her beloved dresses. Brought up at close range, they were certainly blue-streaked, and there was plain lack of the snowy whiteness her stern washing-creed demanded. At intervals, small figures issued from the house and circled about the clotheslines, inspecting their contents critically. Miss Theodosia saw one of them--it was the child of her doorstep--lay questionable hold (it must be questionable!) upon a delicate garment and examine a portion of it excitedly. She saw the child dart back to the house and again issue forth, dragging the slender young washerwoman. Together they examined. Miss Theodosia caught up her glasses and brought the little pair into the near field of her vision; she saw both anxious young faces. The face of Stefana was strained and careworn.