Had the rooms been cells only, with but a pallet of straw upon the floors, Mrs. Jocelyn would have responded to that appeal, and she stepped forward resolved to smile and appear pleased with everything, no matter how stifled she might feel for want of space, air, and light.
But when she crossed the threshold into the spacious, sun-lighted room, and looked up at the high ceiling and across its wide area; when she had glanced around and seen on every side the results of the strong spells laid upon stout Mrs. Wheaton by Mildred's domestic magic, and the dainty touches with which the solid work had been supplemented, her face lighted up with a sweet surprise.
"Oh, OH, how much better this is than you led me to expect! Is all this really ours? Can we afford so large a room? Here are the dear old things, too, with which I first went to housekeeping." Then stepping to her husband's aide she put her arm around his neck as she looked into his eyes and said, "Martin, this is home. Thank God, it is home-like after all. With you and the children around me I can be more than content—I can be very happy in this place. I feared that we might be too crowded, and that the children might suffer."
"Of course you didn't think of yourself, Nan. Millie's the good fairy to thank for all this. The way she and another female divinity have conjured in these rooms the last three days is a matter wholly beyond the masculine mind."
"Father did a great deal, too, and did it much better than you could expect from a man. But, come, I'm mistress of this small fraction of the venerable mansion till after breakfast, and then, mamma, I'll put the baton of rule in your hands. I've burned my fingers and spoiled my complexion over the stove, and I don't intend that a cold breakfast shall be the result."
"Millie," cried Belle, rushing out of the second room, which she had inspected in her lightning-like way before greeting her sister, "our room is lovely. You are a gem, an onyx, a fickle wild rose. It's all splendid—a perpetual picnic place, to which we'll bring our own provisions and cook 'em our own way. No boss biddies in this establishment. It's ever so much better than I expected after you once get here; but as the hymn goes, 'How dark and dismal is the way!'"
It was with difficulty that the children, wild over the novelty of it all, could be settled quietly at the table. It was the family's first meal in a tenement-house. The father's eye grew moist as he looked around his board and said, deep in his heart, "Never did a sweeter, fairer group grace a table in this house, although it has stood more than a century. If for their sakes I cannot be a man—"
"Martin," began his wife, her delicate features flushing a little, "before we partake of this our first meal I want you all to join me in your hearts while I say from the depths of mine, God bless our home."
An hour later, as he went down-town, Mr. Jocelyn finished his sentence. "If for the sake of such a wife and such children I cannot stop, I'm damned."