April days began to wear their tearful beauty, and the southwest room at the old house was given up to Mr. Armstrong.
CHAPTER XX.
PAUL.
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"Standing, with reluctant feet, Where the brook and river meet, Womanhood and childhood fleet!" Longfellow |
Glory had not been content with the utmost she could find to do in making the southwest room as clean, and bright, and fresh, and perfect in its appointments as her zealous labor and Miss Henderson's nice, old-fashioned methods and materials afforded possibility for. Twenty times a day, during the few that intervened between its fitting up and Mr. Armstrong's occupation of it, she darted in, to settle a festoon of fringe, or to pick a speck from the carpet, or to move a chair a hair's-breadth this way or that, or to smooth an invisible crease in the counterpane, or, above all, to take a pleased survey of everything once more, and to wonder how the minister would like it.
So well, indeed, he liked it, when he had taken full possession, that he seemed to divine the favorite room must have been relinquished to him, and to scruple at keeping it quite solely to himself.
In the pleasant afternoons, when the spring sun got round to his westerly windows, and away from the southeast apartment, whither Miss Henderson had betaken herself, her knitting work, and her Bible, and where now the meals were always spread, he would open his door, and let the pleasantness stray out across the passage, and into the keeping room, and would often take a book, and come in, himself, also, with the sunlight. Then Glory, busy in the kitchen, just beyond, would catch words of conversation, or of reading, or even be called in to hear the latter. And she began to think that there were good times, truly, in this world, and that even she was "in 'em!"
April days, as they lengthened and brightened, brought other things, also, to pass.