"Yes; I had just bought it. All concealment is really at an end now. And I am rather glad I did buy it, because this is certainly better than the coffee-room of an inn, isn't it?"
"How proud he is of his house! And well he may be! And when did he arrange all this beautiful furniture?"
"When she banished him from London. It was something to do; and she does like it?"
"She does indeed. Have you furnished it all?"
"Not nearly all. I wanted your advice about the other parlor and the housekeeper's room and—oh, lots of things. Yes, you are quite right in the surmise which I see trembling on those lips. Mrs. Burbidge is going to be our housekeeper. She's staying at old nurse's, ready to come in whenever she's wanted. If any one else decides to keep house for me she can be sewing-maid, or still-room maid, or lady-in-waiting to the hen-roost."
"I see," she said, crumbling bread and looking at him across the glass and the silver and the white flowers. "So this was the house! When I was in the straw nest you made me I never thought the house could be like this. I imagined it damp and desolate, with strips of torn paper—ugly patterns—hanging from the wall, and dust and cobwebs and mice, perhaps even a rat. I was almost sure I heard a rat!"
"Poor, poor little princess."
"Yes, I will!" she said, suddenly, answering a voice that was certainly not his. "I don't care what you say, I will tell him. Edward, when I ran away it wasn't only because I didn't want to be a burden and all that—though that was true, too—the real true truth was that I was frightened. Yes, I was! I shivered in that straw nest and listened and listened and listened, and held my breath and listened again, and I was almost sure I heard something moving in the house; and it was so velvet-dark, and I had to get up every time I wanted to strike a match, because of not setting fire to the straw, and at last there were only four matches left. And I kept thinking—suppose something should come creeping, creeping, very slowly and softly, through the darkness, so that I shouldn't know it until it was close to me and touched me! I couldn't bear it—so I ran away. Now despise me and call me a coward."
But he only said, "My poor Princess, how could I ever have left you alone for a moment?" and came around the table expressly to cut just the right number of white grapes for her from the bunch in the silver basket. Being there, his hand touched her head, lightly, as one might touch the plumage of a bird.
"How soft your hair is!" he said, in a low voice, and went back to his place.