doings, and take them as they are, what a multiplication-table of
opportunities it opens up! You may happen upon a good time any
minute, then. Neighborhoods used to go on in that simple fashion; life
used to be "co-operative."

Mother said something like that after Leslie and Harry had gone away.

"Only you can't get them into it again," objected Rosamond. "It's a
case of Humpty Dumpty. The world will go on."

"_One_ world will," said Barbara. "But the world is manifold. You can
set up any kind of a monad you like, and a world will shape itself
round it. You've just got to live your own way, and everything that
belongs to it will be sure to join on. You'll have a world before you
know it. I think myself that's what the Ark means, and Mount Ararat,
and the Noachian--don't they call it?--new foundation. That's the way
they got up New England, anyhow."

"Barbara, what flights you take!"

"Do I? Well, we have to. The world lives up nineteen flights now, you
know, besides the old broken-down and buried ones."

It was a few days after that, that the news came to mother of Aunt
Radford's illness, and she had to go up to Oxenham. Father went with
her, but he came back the same night. Mother had made up her mind to
stay a week. And so we had to keep house without her.

One afternoon Grandfather Holabird came down. I don't know why, but if
ever mother did happen to be out of the way, it seemed as if he took