Still, he could not forget her wistfulness when his wife and he were looking at them, and her disappointment when they decided against them.

He had toyed, in, his after-talk to Mrs.March, with a sort of hypothetical obligation they had to modify their plans so as to meet the widow's want of just such a family as theirs; they had both said what a blessing it would be to her, and what a pity they could not do it; but they had decided very distinctly that they could not.

Now it seemed to him that they might; and he asked himself whether he had not actually departed as much from their ideal as if he had taken board with the widow.

Suddenly it seemed to him that his wife asked him this, too.
"I reckon," said Fulkerson, "that she could have arranged to give you your meals in your rooms, and it would have come to about the same thing as housekeeping." "No sort of boarding can be the same as house-keeping," said March.

"I want my little girl to have the run of a kitchen, and I want the whole family to have the moral effect of housekeeping.