But when she had gone, Calliope laughed, softly and ambiguously and wholly contagiously, so that Hannah, whose face had begun to pucker like a child's, unwillingly joined her. And then, partly because of Henry's reassuring, "Now then, now then, Hannah," and partly at the touch of his big hand and in the particular, delicious embarrassment which comes but once, Hannah tremulously spoke her conclusion: "I don't care," she said, "I don't care! I'm _glad_--for Gramma." Calliope sat smiling, looking, in her delicate color and frailty and the black and white of her dress, like some one on a fan, exquisitely and appropriately painted. "I was thinking," she said brightly to Hannah, "going without a thing is some like a jumping tooth. It hurts you before-hand, but when it's gone for good all the hurt sort of eases down and peters out and can't do you any more harm." But I think they both knew that this was not all. For some way, outside the errantry of prettiness and proportion, Calliope and Hannah too had come into their own. I looked at Calliope, her face faintly flushed by the unwonted hour; at Hannah, rosy little bride; and at her adoring giant over whom some god had cast the usual spell of wedding blushes. Verily, I thought, would not one say there is rose pink enough in the world for us all? As the curtain rose again Calliope leaned toward me. "I don't believe any dress," she said, "pink silk or any other kind, ever dressed up so many folks's souls!" FOOTNOTE: [7] Copyright, 1913, The Delineator. PEACE[8] When they went to South America for six months, the Henslows, that live across the street from me, wanted to rent their cottage. And of course, being a neighbor, I wanted them to get the fifteen dollars a month. But--being the cottage was my neighbor--I couldn't help, deep down in my inner head, feeling kind of selfish pleased that it stood vacant a while. It's a chore to have a new neighbor in the summer. They always want to borrow your rubber fruit-rings, and they forget to return some; and they come in and sit in the mornings when you want to get your work out of the way before the hot part of a hot day crashes down on you. I can neighbor agreeable when the snow flies, but summers I want my porch and my rocker and my wrapper and my palm-leaf fan, and nobody to call on. And--I don't want to sound less neighborly than I mean to sound--I don't want any real danger of being what you might say called-on--not till the cool of the day. Then, on a glorious summer morning, right out of a clear blue sky, what did I see but two trunks plopped down on the Henslows' porch! I knew they were never back so soon. I knew the two trunks meant renters, and nothing but renters. "I'll bet ten hundred thousand dollars one of them plays the flute and practices evenings," I says.