“It’s not bad for a woman of forty, if I do say it myself!”
She didn’t say this any more, because it[Pg 284] worried Maude, but there were times when she defiantly thought it. It gave so much zest to life. For instance, that evening when they came back from the picnic, and every one else was so tired, and she wasn’t, one bit, even if she was for—
As she left the kitchen and the tantalizing aroma of the doughnuts, another perfume came floating in at the open front door. It was the scent of those dear little pinks and verbenas in the garden.
“I guess I’ll go out and sit on the porch for half an hour,” thought Miss Carter.
So out she went, and the very sight of the garden on this summer day made her so happy that tears came to her eyes. Maude had improved the house a good deal, but she had been satisfied to leave the garden to her aunt, and it was just as it had always been—a gay, careless sort of garden, with a lawn shaded by fine old trees, and a rebellious crowd of bright, old-fashioned flowers. The sweet alyssum was foaming over the borders of the largest bed and marching down to the path, just as it had done when she was a little girl. There were the rosebushes that her mother had planted, and the privet hedge that had seemed so tall and dark and impenetrable to a child’s vision. It was indeed a dear and wonderful old garden!
With a sigh of content, she sank into a chair—and almost at once jumped up again. She mustn’t sit out here in her gingham house dress, wearing these old shoes! Somebody might see her, and Maude would never get over it if anybody should see her aunt looking really comfortable; so she went back to the house, and up to her own room.
This was, in Miss Carter’s eyes, the most charming room in all the world. The things in it were old, and some of them were not very beautiful, but she liked them—all of them, even the two old calendars on the wall and the French clock that had not ticked for years and years. The dark shades were pulled down against the afternoon sun, and a limpid green light filled the room. The mahogany bureau shone like dark water, and the big four-post bed, with its old-fashioned bolster and the ruffled spread, looked exquisitely restful.
“Upon my word,” said Miss Carter to herself, “I believe I could take forty winks! Such a hot afternoon! And there’s nothing much I ought to do for the next half hour.”
Now the naps of housekeepers are different from the naps of other people. There is always a faint feeling of guilt about them, no matter how much work has been done, or how well earned the rest—always a consciousness of all sorts of other things that ought to be done. Even Miss Carter, whose house was a model of cleanliness and order, had this feeling of guilt, and was quite human enough to enjoy her nap all the more for it.
She settled herself comfortably on the sofa, and closed her eyes. One of the shades flapped softly in the breeze, and she thought that it was like a sail, and that she was floating off somewhere—floating off—