“Penelope!”
“She’s dead, I know. I shouldn’t speak like that. But she had no music in her, and Jack hadn’t a note of it. But I—I——”
“Yes, dear.”
“Jack was my favorite cousin,” Penelope whispered. “You know how much I cared for him. Even when that Delane girl took him away. And now Jack’s child—my music is in her—and by that much she’s mine, not hers,—she’s mine!”
CHAPTER IX
PENELOPE UNBENDS
Caroline went up to bed at half past eight in a happy daze. She had played for ever so long in the parlor that at last was quite dark, Liszt and Brahms, simple arrangements, of course, which her mother had selected for her and then she had improvised rapturously, enjoying that piano as a man who has gone thirsty for hours in the heat may enjoy (too weak a word!) a draft of cool water.
At last Aunt Eunice had come and turned on the lights and told her it was bed time. Was she afraid to go to bed alone?
Caroline smiled vaguely and said: “No!”
Then with Aunt Eunice’s kiss on her cheek, she went up the stairs to her wonderful room. She found a shaded electric light turned on, the bedcover folded, the bedclothes turned down. A fresh nightgown from the suitcase lay on the bed, and the blue leather traveling-case was on the dressing-table.
Caroline undressed Mildred and put her in the fresh white bed. Oh, such a contrast that bed was to the stuffy berth on the train, and the rumpled bed with the thin mattress, all in lumps, that she had shared with the oldest baby (fat and a terrible crowder!) at Cousin Delia’s.