Mrs. Holabird never came through the rooms without a fresh thrill of pleasantness. Her home had _expressed_ itself here, as it had never done anywhere else. There was something in the fair, open, sunshiny roominess and cosey connection of these apartments, hers and her daughters', in harmony with the largeness and cheeriness and clearness in which her love and her wish for them held them always. It was more glad than grand; and she aimed at no grandness; but the generous space was almost splendid in its effect, as you looked through, especially to her who had lived and contrived in a "spy-glass house" so long. The doors right through from front to back, and the wide windows at either end and all the way, gave such sweep and light; also the long mirrors, that had been from time unrememberable over the mantels in the town parlors, in the old, useless, horizontal style, and were here put, quite elegantly tall,--the one in Mrs. Holabird's room above her daintily appointed dressing-table (which was only two great square trunks full of blankets, that could not be stowed away anywhere else, dressed up in delicate-patterned chintz and set with her boxes and cushions and toilet-bottles), and the other, in "the girls' room," opposite; these made magnificent reflections and repetitions; and at night, when they all lit their bed-candles, and vibrated back and forth with their last words before they shut their doors and subsided, gave a truly festival and illuminated air to the whole mansion; so that Mrs. Roderick would often ask, when she came in of a morning in their busiest time, "Did you have company last night? I saw you were all lit up." "We had one candle apiece," Barbara would answer, very concisely. "I do wish all our windows didn't look Mrs. Roderick's way," Rosamond said once, after she had gone. "And that she _didn't_ have to come through our clothes-yard of a Monday morning, to see just how many white skirts we have in the wash," added Barbara. But this is off the track. "What is it, Ruth?" asked Mrs. Holabird, as she came in upon the little figure in the white chair, midway in the long light through the open rooms. "You didn't really mind Stephen, did you?" "O no, indeed, aunt! I was only thinking out things. I believe I've done, pretty nearly. I guess I sha'n't go. I wanted to make sure I wasn't provoked." "You're talking from where you left off, aren't you, Ruthie?" "Yes, I guess so," said Ruth, laughing. "It seems like talking right on,--doesn't it?--when you speak suddenly out of a 'think.' I wonder what _alone_ really means. It doesn't ever quite seem alone. Something thinks alongside always, or else you couldn't keep it up." "Are you making an essay on metaphysics? You're a queer little Ruth." "Am I?" Ruth laughed again. "I can't help it. It _does_ answer back." "And what was the answer about this time?" That was how Ruth came to let it out.