The little boy sulked for some time and then followed her on tiptoe. In the doorway he looked round anxiously. He was afraid of this room though it was brighter than any other and Anne called it the sunshine room. The yellow-checked wall paper looked sparkling and even on a cloudy day the cherry-wood furniture looked as if the sun shone on it. The chairs’ legs stood stiffly on the floor of scrubbed boards and their backs were like lyres. That room was mother’s. She did not live in it because she had gone to heaven and had not yet returned home, but everything was left as it had been when she went away. Her portrait hung above the flowered couch, her sewing-machine stood in the recess near the window. The piano had been hers too and the children were forbidden to touch it. Yet, Christopher was quite sure that it was full of piano-mice, who at night, when everybody is asleep, run about in silver shoes and then the air rings with their patter.
“Let us go from here,” he said trembling, “but you go first.”
There was nobody in grandfather’s room. Only some crackling from the stove. Only the ticking of the marble clock on the writing table.
Suddenly little Christopher became braver. He ran to the stove. The stove was a solid silver-grey earthenware column. On its top there was an urn emitting white china flames, rigid white china flames. This was beautiful and incomprehensible and Christopher liked to look at them.
He pointed to the brass door. Through the ventilators one could see what was going on inside the stove.
“Now the stove fairies are dancing in there!”
In vain Anne looked through the holes; she could not see any fairies. Ordinary flames were bobbing up above the cinders. The smoke slowly twisted itself up into the chimney.
“Aren’t they lovely? They have red dresses and sing,” said the boy. The little girl turned away bored.
“I only hear the ticking of the clock.” Suddenly she stood on tiptoe. When she did so, the corners of her eyes and of her mouth rose slightly. She too wanted to invent something curious:
“Tick-tack.... A little dwarf hobbles in the room. Do you hear? Tick-tack....”