"Of course they can't call on every one, Cousin Mary," she said airily to John's wife; "and like enough they 're not the kind of folks I would care to know, anyhow." Sarah was not the only member of the family who had found trials by the way. Ethel and Fred had entered school, and at first they came home each afternoon with woeful faces. New methods of study, recitation, discipline, and even of recreation puzzled and frightened them. They regularly begged each morning not to go back; but as regularly their mother's diplomatic bantering and systematic appeals to their pride conquered, and they started off at half-past eight, heads high, and chins bravely up-raised. To Caleb, the city was a thing of noise, hurry, and more people than he had thought existed. Early and late he worked in the store. To the "early" part he did not object--it even seemed late to his farm-bred ideas of early rising; but to the evenings--Caleb never understood the rush and confusion that entered the big market and grocery with the lighting of the flaring gas jets. To him it was a time for quiet meditation and sleep--not for haggling over the price of sugar and beans. "I don't like it," he would say sometimes to his wife; "I don't like it, Sarah. This doling out a peck of potatoes and two quarts of apples--why, Sarah, just think of the bushels and barrels I 've grown myself! It's so small, Sarah, so small!" "Of course it is now," comforted Sarah, "but only think what 't will be later on--only think." December, January, February, and March passed; and the first of April brought a letter from the lessee of the farm asking if he was to have the place through the summer. "Of course he can have it," declared Sarah. "Just as if we wanted it again!" "Yes, yes, of course," murmured Caleb. "I--I'll write later on. He said if he heard by the middle of the month, 't would do." It was an early, and a wonderfully beautiful spring that year. Warm, moist winds came up from the south and stirred the twigs and branches into life. The grass grew green on sunny slopes, and the tulips and crocuses turned the dull brown beds into riotous color and bloom. Caleb went out of his way each day that he might pass a tiny little park, and he always stopped there a motionless two minutes--he would have told you that he was listening to the green things growing. Sarah grew restless indoors. She even crawled out on to the fire escape and sat there one day; but she never tried that but once.