“I know what I'll do,” she added, literally shaking herself as she jumped off the trunk. “I'll unpack. I'll cover up everything ugly that I can with something pretty from Tillbury.”
Hurried as she had been her departure from the cottage on Amity Street, Nan had packed in her trunk many of those little possessions, dear to her childish heart, that had graced her bedroom. These appeared from the trunk even before she hung away her clothes in the unplastered closet where the cold wind searched through the cracks from out-of-doors. Into that closet, away back in the corner, went a long pasteboard box, tied carefully with strong cord. Nan patted it gently with her hand before she left the box, whispering:
“You dear! I wouldn't have left you behind for anything! I won't let them know you are here; but sometimes, when I'm sure nobody will interrupt, you shall come out.”
She spread a fringed towel over the barren top of the dresser. It would not cover it all, of course; but it made an island in a sea of emptiness.
And on the island she quickly set forth the plain little toilet-set her mother had given her on her last birthday, the manicure set that was a present from Papa Sherwood, and the several other knickknacks that would help to make the big dresser look as though “there was somebody at home,” as she whispered to herself.
She draped a scarf here, hung up a pretty silk bag there, placed Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigree easels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run and which was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot and a broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one time prized by the babies of her aunt's family, for the ring at the top was dented by little teeth.
Nothing, however, could take the curse of ugliness off the staring gray walls of the room, or from the horrible turkey-red and white canton-flannel quilt that bedecked the bed. Nan longed to spill the contents of her ink bottle over that hideous coverlet, but did not dare.
The effort to make the big east room look less like a barn made Nan feel better in her mind. It was still dreary, it must be confessed. There were a dozen things she wished she could do to improve it. There were nothing but paper shades at the windows. Even a simple scrim curtain——-
And, in thinking of this, Nan raised her eyes to one window to see a face pressed close against the glass, and two rolling, crablike eyes glaring in at her.
“Mercy!” ejaculated Nan Sherwood. “What is the matter with that child's eyes? They'll drop out of her head!”