I explained what the noise was and she returned to the kitchen, while I resumed consumption of my cigar and Ethel returned to her room, but in a few minutes:
“Mis. Vernon. Mis. Vernon. Ain’t there no more lights?”
Ethel had dropped asleep, so I went out into the kitchen. Minerva had lighted two lamps, and to me the kitchen looked like a ball room, it was so light, but the dusky maid from the Metropolis was seeing New York in her mind’s eye, and two kerosene lamps did not take the place of the firmament of gas and electric lights to which she had been used all her life.
“It is the first night and I will humour her,” thought I, and so I brought out a lamp from the parlour and another from the sitting room. I had the light from my cigar and needed no other.
When all four lamps had united to cast their radiance upon the kitchen Minerva was satisfied and thanked me in a die-a-way tone that, being interpreted, meant “Give me back New York with its crowds, and its noise and its glitter and its entertaining ‘gentlemen’ and its ice cream and soda.” Poor Minerva! Our joy and happiness came from the very things that were the abomination of desolation to her.
Meanwhile Ethel awoke from her nap and came down stairs. “Mercy, how dark it is. Why didn’t you light a lamp? Where are you, Philip?”
“I’m out on the piazza. Come out?”
“No, dear, I want to finish that story of Mrs. Everard Cotes’. I’m fascinated with it.”
“Ethel, come here,” said I, in a tone full of meaning.
She felt her way out.