"Yes, they were his choice, and for you."
"Who told you this, Mary? I—I'm so surprised—so glad. Who told you about it, dear Mary?"
"Joseph Esmond. Fred made a confidant of him, and they went together to look at the things."
"And that's what makes my room different from his mother's. Oh, Mary, I wish you could see it—so white, so fresh and breezy, and hers so hot looking and smothered up with silk. How I shall love that dear room after this."
After a moment Isabel's face lost its sparkling expression. She was accusing herself of selfishness.
"But why did he get nothing of the kind for you, Mary!" she said very seriously.
"Oh, I'm to be brought up so differently, such things would look queer enough at the Old Homestead, you know," answered Mary, laughing.
Isabel shook her head, but there was light in her eyes, and a rich color in her cheeks. She no longer felt it wicked to receive kindness from the Farnhams, and her little heart beat with gratitude to them, the first she had ever felt, for the pretty things with which she was surrounded.
"Come," she said cheerfully, gathering up her apron with its treasure of leaves. "How long we have been sitting here. It is almost sun-down."
Mary started up. True enough, the woods were flooded with a dusky purple, and the sunset was shooting its golden arrows everywhere among the trees around them.