“Morbid?” she repeated. “That’s an easy word with which to dismiss the things you are afraid of. I’m not in the least afraid of great-grandmother.... Besides, I don’t think of her as dead. She is the best of great-grandmothers—extremely practical. She makes compliments transparent—on her stairs, at any rate.” Margaret laid her hand on the panels. “And she makes me glad I can feel the grain in this oak.” She turned away and walked to the bottom of the flight. Then she glanced up at John with a quick smile. “And sometimes, when I have been lazy, she sends me up to my room again to change my dress.”
She took him to admire a lacquer cabinet that stood in the hall.
“I expect you like looking at and touching these things? I know I should, if I had been long in a warship.”
John rejoiced in her understanding. “Carpets,” he said, “are the unceasing wonders; and the sound of dresses, and candles!”
“Candles? Do you remember that phrase in a poem of yours—‘the spear-head flames’?”
“Yes. How did you see it?”
“Hugh sent home the copy you gave him. And—do you mind?—I showed it and other poems of yours, without your name, of course, to a friend of ours, a man whose judgment people believe in.”
“I’m very glad. What did he say?”
“Good things. I’ll tell you when there is more time.”
“Who was he?”