"When you're in the Black Hole, don't breathe," Barbara would say, after he was gone. But then we thought a good deal of Grandfather Holabird, for all. That day, when he came in and astonished us so, we were all as busy and as cosey as we could be. Mrs. Holabird was making a rug of the piece of the new carpet that had been cut out for the hearth, bordering it with a strip of shag. Rosamond was inventing a feather for her hat out of the best of an old black-cock plume, and some bits of beautiful downy white ones with smooth tips, that she brought forth out of a box. "What are they, Rose? And where did you get them?" Ruth asked, wondering. "They were dropped,--and I picked them up," Rosamond answered, mysteriously. "The owner never missed them." "Why, Rosamond!" cried Stephen, looking up from his Latin grammar. "Did!" persisted Rosamond. "And would again. I'm sure I wanted 'em most. Hens lay themselves out on their underclothing, don't they?" she went on, quietly, putting the white against the black, and admiring the effect. "They don't dress much outside." "O, hens! What did you make us think it was people for?" "Don't you ever let anybody know it was hens! Never cackle about contrivances. Things mustn't be contrived; they must happen. Woman and her accidents,--mine are usually catastrophes." Rosamond was so busy fastening in the plume, and giving it the right set-up, that she talked a little delirium of nonsense. Barbara flung down a magazine,--some old number. "Just as they were putting the very tassel on to the cap of the climax, the page is torn out! What do you want, little cat?" she went on to her pussy, that had tumbled out of her lap as she got up, and was stretching and mewing. "Want to go out doors and play, little cat? Well, you can. There's plenty of room out of doors for two little cats!" And going to the door with her, she met grandfather and the cane coming in. There was time enough for Mrs. Holabird to pull down the blinds, and for Ruth to take a long, thinking look out from under hers, through the sash of window left unshaded; for old Mr. Holabird and his cane were slow; the more awful for that. Ruth thought to herself, "Yes; there is plenty of room out of doors; and yet people crowd so! I wonder why we can't live bigger!" [Illustration] Mrs. Holabird's thinking was something like it. "Five hundred dollars to worry about, for what is set down upon a few square yards of 'out of doors.' And inside of that, a great contriving and going without, to put something warm underfoot over the sixteen square feet that we live on most!" She had almost a mind to pull up the blinds again; it was such a very little matter, the bit of new carpet, after all.