"H'm," she said; then they went inside.
Eliza looked about in silence for a minute.
"It's clean," she said at last; and Phil knew she was moved to catch at a word of praise as one says of a neighbor's plain and uninteresting baby, "How healthy he looks!"
He began explaining his devices to Eliza and her heart was touched by his joy in all this cheap gloom.
By the time he opened the back door, she was ready to weep over him; and she said:—
"That's a real sightly piazza."
Then they moved into the little kitchen.
"I've been waiting for you to tell me what to do here," said the artist, and Eliza rose to the bait and began pulling things about and showing him where shelves must be placed.
"How are you goin' to give a tea," she asked, "with one broken mug?"
"Borrow cups and saucers from Aunt Isabel. That's easy; but," he looked down at Eliza, whose face had regained its usual alertness, "it occurred to me that perhaps I have some of my own—those that you packed for me and that ran away to the island."