Things might have run easier if Helwise had been--well, something quite inconceivably different from what she was. Her descent upon his desolate hearth from unrewarding efforts as companion to successive old ladies, had been welcomed by him at the time, not knowing that it was her special mission in life to make it more desolate still. He had been too busy at first to notice the atmosphere with which she surrounded him, attributing his dreariness of spirit to his father’s loss and his over-heavy task; and by the time he had made himself and formed his routine, it was too late to send her away. She was happy after her own parasitical fashion, and to uproot her now would mean a gigantic effort to which neither his will nor his heart felt equal. But of late there had grown upon him a longing for a home of his own making, an atmosphere with which Helwise should never have anything to do. He murmured old Samuel Daniel’s words as he leaned against the gate. “To have some silly home I do desire, Loth still to warm me by another’s fire.” He had a home, certainly, and one silly enough, too, in its mismanagement and lack of all peace; but it was another silliness for which he yearned, the silliness of little, common home-interests and home-jokes, of crossed glances and talk without words, of parting kisses and meeting hands. He had a fire, of course, as well; that is to say, he paid for it; but in every other sense it was “another’s.” He thought of the drawing-room grate and renounced it violently. Dusk was drawing down, now, though the Mountain still stayed with him, faintly limned as a dried tear. Milking was over at Rakestraw. He watched the cattle coming out from the shippons to a quiet night in the cool fields. Near at hand a sleepy twittering told him where a late-nested bird was hidden close. The clipped sheep and the sturdy lambs still called to each other, as if the tender time of mother-love was not yet over; and far down on the road he could hear children pattering home from their summer treat. There came into his head a song he had heard at a musical festival. “What can lambkins do, All the keen night through? Nestle by their woolly mother, The careful ewe. “What can nestlings do In the nightly dew? Sleep beneath their mother’s wing Till dawn breaks anew. “If in field or tree There might only be Such a warm, soft sleeping-place Found for me!”