“Very well. Tell sister I will come to her as soon as I finish this letter. Where is she?”
“In the library.”
“In ten minutes I shall be at leisure.”
He found Salome with a piece of sewing in her hand, and her young sister leaning on her lap, chattering merrily about a nest full of eggs which she and Stanley had found that morning in a corner of the orchard; while the latter swung on the back of her chair, winding over his finger a short curl that lay on her neck. It was a pleasant, peaceful, homelike picture, worthy of Eastman Johnson’s brush, and for thirty 325 years such a group had not been seen in that quiet old library.
Dr. Grey paused at the threshold, to admire the graceful pose of Jessie’s fairy figure,—the lazy nonchalance of Stanley’s posture,—and the finely shaped head that rose above both, like some stately lily, surrounded by clustering croci; but Salome was listening for his footsteps, and turned her head at his entrance.
“Stanley, take Jessie up to my room, and show her your Chinese puzzle. When I want either or both of you, I will call you. Close the door after you, and mind that you do not get to romping, and shake the house down.”
“How very pretty Jessie has grown during the last year. Her complexion has lost its muddy tinge, and is almost waxen,” said the doctor, when the children had left the room and scampered up stairs.
“She is a very sweet-tempered and affectionate little thing, but I never considered her pretty. She is too much like her father.”
“Salome, death veils all blemishes.”
“That depends very much on the character of the survivors; but we will not discuss abstract propositions,—especially since I have resolved to follow the old oriental maxim,—