CHAPTER XV
ANOTHER BOARDER
Lyddy heard her sister and Harris Colesworth in the hall, and then in the dining-room. The girls had not made a fire in any other room in the house. It took too much wood, and the dining-room was large enough to be used as a sitting-room “for company,” too.
And with the fresh maple branches and arbutus decorating the space over the mantel, and the great dish of violets on the table, and the odorous plum branches everywhere, that dining-room was certainly an attractive apartment.
The old-fashioned blue-and-white china and the few pieces of heavy silverware “dressed” the table very nicely. The linen was yellow with age, but every glass and spoon shone.
The sun streamed warmly in at the windows, the view from which was lovely. Lyddy heard the appreciative remarks of the young man as ’Phemie ushered him in.
But she ran out to greet the old gentleman. The elder Colesworth was sixty or more–a frail, scholarly-looking man, with a winning smile. He, like Mr. Bray, leaned on a cane; but Mr. Bray was at least fifteen years Mr. Colesworth’s junior.
“So you are ‘L. Bray’; are you?” asked the old gentleman, shaking hands with her. “You are the elder daughter and head of the household, your father tells me.”
“I am older than ’Phemie–yes,” admitted Lyddy, blushing. “But we have no ‘head’ here. I do my part of the work, and she does hers.”
“And, please God,” said Mr. Bray, earnestly, “I shall soon be able to do mine.”
“Work is the word, then!” cried the old gentleman. “I tell Harris that’s all that is the matter with me. I knocked off work too early. ‘Retired,’ they call it. But it doesn’t pay–it doesn’t pay.”