Elizabeth was looking up at the ruined house, trying to imagine how it had seemed, with lights in the windows, with fires on its deserted hearthstones, with all the warm brightness of home shining through its open doorway. Miss Miranda must have been thinking, with far greater and more painful clearness, of much the same thing.
“I used to believe,” she said suddenly in midst of a silence, “when I came home from school and crossed the lawn to that side door, that burned, marred door in the wall that is the only one left, that it opened on the dearest place in the world. The big, black cherry tree that grows beside it used to spread such a cloud of white blossoms every spring! I always thought, when I heard people talk of the narrow gate of Heaven, that it must look just like my little dark door under the blooming cherry tree.”
She moved over to sit by Elizabeth at the edge of the pool.
“It is not easy to come home to an empty, silent house that is not really home,” she went on. “No one knows that better than I, my dear, or would like more to make it up to you.”
Betsey moved closer and smiled up at her gratefully.
“You do make it up to me,” she said.
David, who was lying stretched out at Miss Miranda’s feet was busy at a task of his own. It seemed that he was a persistent boy who would never lay aside a piece of work until every detail that he could think of had been added to make it complete. He had fetched some clay from the far end of the garden and was modeling the frustum of a pyramid and those three confusing portions into which it could be divided. Betsey watched him idly, quite content that he should have the labor and she the benefit. He demonstrated them with a flourish on the smooth rim of the pool.
“You make it so clear,” remarked Miranda, “that I almost understand it myself, although I had forgotten it ten years ago.”
“Your father must know all about such things,” David said rather wistfully; “it discourages me to think of how much he knows. Do you suppose he would care to have—to have any one help him in his shop, just to sharpen tools and screw bolts and run errands?”
“He needs some one like that very greatly,” Miss Miranda answered. “As a rule he likes to do his work alone for fear the news of what he is trying to make will get about before he is ready. But I know you well enough to be certain that you will give away no secrets.”