It was no use talking; it was only transposing sentences; she "tuk a graat intheresht in us, an' sure she'd do annything to hilp us, but she mûst jûst be lukkin out fer hersel'." And that very day she had the kitchen scrubbed up at a most unwonted hour, and her best bonnet on,--a rim of flowers and lace, with a wide expanse--of ungarnished head between it and the chignon it was supposed to accommodate,--and took her "afternoon out" to search for some new situation, where people were subject neither to sickness nor removals nor company nor children nor much of anything; and where, under these circumstances, and especially if there were "set tubs, and hot and cold water," she would probably remain just about as long as her "intheresht" would _not_ allow of her continuing with us. A kitchen exodus is like other small natural commotions,--sure to happen when anything greater does. When the sun crosses the line we have a gale down below. "_Now_ what shall we do?" asked Mrs. Holabird, forlornly, coming back into the sitting-room out of that vacancy in the farther apartments which spreads itself in such a still desertedness of feeling all through the house. "Just what we've done before, motherums!" said Barbara, more bravely than she felt. "The next one is somewhere. Like Tupper's 'wife of thy youth,' she must be 'now living upon the earth.' In fact, I don't doubt there's a long line of them yet, threaded in and out among the rest of humanity, all with faces set by fate toward our back door. There's always a coming woman, in that direction at least." "I would as lief come across the staying one," said Mrs. Holabird, with meekness. It cooled down our enthusiasm. Stephen, especially, was very much quenched. The next one was not only somewhere, but everywhere, it seemed, and nowhere. "Everything by turns and nothing long," Barbara wrote up over the kitchen chimney with the baker's chalk. We had five girls between that time and our moving to Westover, and we had to move without a girl at last; only getting a woman in to do days' work. But I have not come to the family-moving yet. The house-moving was the pretty part. Every pleasant afternoon, while the building was upon the rollers, we walked over, and went up into all the rooms, and looked out of every window, noting what new pictures they gave as the position changed from day to day; how now this tree and now that shaded them: how we gradually came to see by the end of the Haddens' barn, and at last across it,--for the slope, though gradual, was long,--and how the sunset came in more and more, as we squared toward the west; and there was always a thrill of excitement when we felt under us, as we did again and again, the onward momentary surge of the timbers, as the workmen brought all rightly to bear, and the great team of oxen started up. Stephen called these earthquakes.