"Let me carry it in for you," said Val, preceding her grandmother with the little rosewood box.
As she came back Julia heard Val in the hall dismissing poor Emmie and her piano key with short shrift. She closed the door sharply, and confronted her friend with ominous eyes.
"How my grandmother can bear to be so much in that room!"
"Without a fire on a day like this?"
"Yes; but anyhow, it's horrible in there."
"I thought you used to love it when she let you in."
"Yes, when I was little, and didn't understand. It's full of dilapidated things that belonged to dead people. Ethan's father's fiddle—smashed. My father's patent lamps—none of 'em work. Our grandfather's walking-sticks, very tired-looking, leaning dejected against the wall under a faded dirty picture of the Baptist college he built—it's a Roman Catholic hospital now. And then that thing of Aunt Valeria's—that's the worst of all!" She came nearer, and crouched down on the rug beside her friend.
"What do you mean?"
"A pile of what used to be modelling clay. It's quite black now, but if you see it in one particular way a face seems to look dimly at you out of the dust, and, oh! it's the sorrowfullest face I ever saw. It's the face of somebody who hadn't a chance."
"What is it like?"