"He forgets a good many things, since his sickness," father said, "unless something comes up to remind him. But there is the paper; he must come across that." "He may change his mind," said mother, "even when he does recollect. We can be sure of nothing." But we grew more fond than ever of the old, sunshiny house. In October Harry Goldthwaite went away again on a year's cruise. Rosamond had a letter from Mrs. Van Alstyne, from New York. She folded it up after she had read it, and did not tell us anything about it. She answered it next day; and it was a month later when one night up stairs she began something she had to say about our winter shopping with,-- "If I had gone to New York--" and there she stopped, as if she had accidentally said what she did not intend. "If you had gone to New York! Why! When?" cried Barbara. "What do you mean?" "Nothing," Rosamond answered, in a vexed way. "Mrs. Van Alstyne asked me, that is all. Of course I couldn't." "Of course you're just a glorious old _noblesse oblige_-d! Why didn't you say something? You might have gone perhaps. We could all have helped. I'd have lent you--that garnet and white silk!" Rosamond would not say anything more, and she would scarcely be kissed. After all, she had co-operated more than any of us. Rose was always the daughter who objected and then did. I have often thought that young man in Scripture ought to have been a woman. It is more a woman's way. The maples were in their gold and vermilion now, and the round masses of the ash were shining brown; we filled the vases with their leaves, and pressed away more in all the big books we could confiscate, and hunted frosted ferns in the wood-edge, and had beautiful pine blazes morning and evening in the brown room, and began to think how pleasant, for many cosey things, the winter was going to be, out here at Westover. "How nicely we could keep Halloween," said Ruth, "round this great open chimney! What a row of nuts we could burn!" "So we will," said Rosamond. "We'll ask the girls. Mayn't we, mother?" "To tea?" "No. Only to the fun,--and some supper. We can have that all ready in the other room." "They'll see the cooking-stove." "They won't know it, when they do," said Barbara. "We might have the table in the front room," suggested Ruth.