We got home just after sunset: unpacked, lit a fire, opened some beers, sat down to play cards, talked about what to make for dinner . . . we had a passel of leftovers from Tom's mother that we decided to turn into hash; we gobbled down our hash, we did dishes, we watched a couple of episodes of Peter Gunn, we fell asleep hard . . . This is all to say that the two of us, and the cat, were glad to be puttering around in our little house again--though the holiday was cheerful and talkative and sweet, and the family was a delight, and nothing could have gone better except to have even more of us on the spot.

Today I think Tom's going to work on the barn before the rain starts, and I'm going to try to catch up on laundry and groceries, but for now we are still lolling around in a post-holiday torpor, enjoying the fruits of the brand-new coffee grinder. The furnace is growling, the lamps are gleaming: Alcott House is cozy and shabby and friendly: a little island on a lake, a painted door into a tree trunk, a badger's burrow in a snowy forest.