“And you?”
“They always keep the peace with me. Isabel even made us a wedding present—a pair of miniatures of my father and mother, that I am very glad to rescue, though, as she politely told me, I was welcome to them, for they were hideously dressed, and she wanted the frames for two sweet photographs of Garibaldi and the Queen of Naples.”
Then looking up as if to find a place for them—
“Why, Ermine, what have you done to the room? It is the old parsonage drawing-room!”
“Did not you mean it, when you took the very proportions of the bay window, and chose just such a carpet?”
“But what have you done to it?”
“Ailie and Rose, and Lady Temple and her boys, have done it. I have sat looking on, and suggesting. Old things that we kept packed up have seen the light, and your beautiful Indian curiosities have found their corners.”
“And the room has exactly the old geranium scent!”
“I think the Curtises must have brought half their greenhouse down. Do you remember the old oak-leaf geranium that you used to gather a leaf of whenever you passed our old conservatory?”
“I have been wondering where the fragrance came from that made the likeness complete. I have smelt nothing like it since!”