"Oh, Mis' Trowbridge, do let me take her," exclaimed Patty.
"Me too!" cried Ide.
"They're just like children. I guess we'll have to humour them this once," laughed Mr. Brett's Cousin Fanny.
When I smiled at Patty, she cuddled her arm round me, and then Ide promptly did the same. Thus interlaced, the procession moved into the house.
The door of the verandah opens into a cosy sitting-room. There is nothing which you could point out as pretty in the furnishing, and decoration there is none; but the room has a delicious, welcoming look, and makes you want to live in it.
There is the queerest carpet on the floor, with irregular stripes of different colours mingling indistinctly with the grey groundwork, and all has faded into a pleasant indefiniteness of tint. There's a high-backed sofa upholstered with black horse-hair, and the springs have evidently been pressed by generations of Trowbridges who have been born, and reared, and died in the old Valley Farmhouse. The big, ugly clock, too, with the pendulum showing through a wreath of flowers on its glass door, has attained the dignity of age, and earned a right to its place on the crowded mantelpiece by ticking out the years for these same generations. There are patchwork cushions and others embroidered with worsted and beads, on the sofa and in the great horse-hair-covered armchair, and the two or three hospitable-looking chairs with rockers. Curious shells, and wax flowers under a glass case, adorn a carved wooden bracket; and there are family portraits, enlarged in crayons from old photographs, hanging on the quaintly-papered wall. Between two windows stands a "secretary bookcase," with a propped-up shelf spread with writing materials and files of paper. In the middle of the room is a round table with a homemade fancy-work cover, scarcely showing under its great bowl of mixed country flowers, and its neat piles of books and magazines. As I went in, the sun blinds were bowed for the summer heat, and the room was filled with a cool, sea-green light.
Suddenly I thought of Mrs. Ess Kay's magnificent palace in New York, with its fountain court and splendid drawing rooms. I saw her "little cottage" at Newport, and the other "cottages" and castles I had grown accustomed to there; but somehow the startling contrast between these pictures and this only made me more content with my present surroundings.
"What a nice room!" I exclaimed to the girls, pausing for a glance around.
They looked surprised.
"Do you think so?" asked Patty. "We were afraid maybe you wouldn't. The things you're used to must be a good deal handsomer. Everything's so old here."