“I’m so glad!” Anne was making an evident effort at expansiveness. “That’s jolly of you—like this we shall be on the same floor.”
“Ah, you’ve kept the rooms you had—?” Kate didn’t know how to put it.
“Yes: the old nursery. First it was turned into a schoolroom, then into my den. One gets attached to places. I never should have felt at home anywhere else. Come and see.”
Ah, here, at last, in the grim middle-aged house, were youth and renovation! The nursery, having changed its use, had perforce had to change its appearance. Japanese walls of reddish gold; a few modern pictures; books; a budding wistaria in a vase of Corean pottery; big tables, capacious armchairs, an ungirlish absence of photographs and personal trifles. Not particularly original; but a sober handsome room, and comfortable, though so far from “cosy.” Kate wondered: “Is it her own idea, or is this what the new girl likes?” She recalled the pink and white trifles congesting her maiden bower, and felt as if a rather serious-minded son were showing her his study. An Airedale terrier, stretched before the fire, reinforced the impression. She didn’t believe many of the new girls had rooms like this.
“It’s all your own idea, isn’t it?” she asked, almost shyly.
“I don’t know—yes. Uncle Fred helped me, of course. He knows a lot about Oriental pottery. I called him ‘Uncle’ after father died,” Anne explained, “because there’s nothing else to call a guardian, is there?”
On the wall Kate noticed a rough but vivid oil-sketch of a branch of magnolias. She went up to it, attracted by its purity of colour. “I like that,” she said.
Anne’s eyes deepened. “Do you? I did it.”
“You, dear? I didn’t know you painted.” Kate felt herself suddenly blushing; the abyss of all she didn’t know about her daughter had once more opened before her, and she just managed to murmur: “I mean, not like this. It’s very broad—very sure. You must have worked....”
The girl laughed, caught in the contagion of her mother’s embarrassment. “Yes, I’ve worked hard—I care for it a great deal.”