The pages fell apart at an article entitled: “Colonial Harpledon,” the greater part of which was taken up by a series of clever sketches signed by the Boston architect whom she had brought to Cranch’s a few months earlier.
Of the six or seven drawings, four were devoted to the Cranch house. One represented the façade and its pillared gates, a second the garden front with the windowless side of the wing, the third a corner of the box garden surrounding the Chinese summer house; while the fourth, a full-page drawing, was entitled: “The back of the slaves’ quarters and service-court: quaint window-grouping.”
On that picture the magazine had opened; it was evidently the one which had been the subject of discussion between my hostess and her visitor.
“You see ... you see....” she cried.
“This picture? Well, what of it? I suppose it’s the far side of the wing—the side we’ve never any of us seen.”
“Yes; that’s just it. He’s horribly upset....”
“Upset about what? I heard him tell the architect he could come back some other day and see the wing ... some day when the maids were not sitting in the court; wasn’t that it?”
She shook her head tragically. “He didn’t mean it. Couldn’t you tell by the sound of his voice that he didn’t?”
Her tragedy airs were beginning to irritate me. “I don’t know that I pay as much attention as all that to the sound of his voice.”
She coloured, and choked back her tears. “I know him so well; I’m always sorry to see him lose his self-control. And then he considers me responsible.”