Without waiting for Jean to answer she began moving noiselessly away on her broad, rubber-soled shoes. She was very slight and gave an effect of deep brownness. She wore a brown serge skirt and a brown silk waist with a brown Scotch pebble pin. She had brown eyes that looked muddy through the thick, myopic glasses, and a braid of dank, brown hair framed her narrow face.
Through the big reading room, empty at this hour, Jean followed, down a rear stairway, along a narrow cemented hall into a storeroom, dim with a ground-glass window protected by an iron grating. Miss MacFarland indicated the great number of packing cases by a nod as she wound her way among them to a farther door. She might have been a guide in the underworld leading the latest spirit to its appointed task. She opened a door, and a sudden glare of morning sunshine filled the place.
"This is the room you will use for the present."
There were two large windows open now on a tiny strip of lawn that ran along this side of the building. A redwood table and bench took up one end of the room. There was nothing else in it except six huge packing cases.
"I'll send you down an apron and sleeve protectors and have Timothy unpack the cases."
She looked about to make sure she had forgotten nothing, and moved toward the door.
"Is there any special rotation you want the cases opened in?"
Jean asked it to pretend experience more than from any idea of its mattering. But she saw by the expression behind the thick glasses that it did make a difference and that Miss MacFarland had forgotten to tell her.
"I was going to tell Timothy, but perhaps I had better mark them."
From the pocket of her black apron she drew a piece of red chalk.