Ethan recovered the volume hurriedly, a prey to conflicting agitations.
"Where's Aunt Valeria?" he said, presently.
"Up in the blue room"—Mrs. Gano glanced overhead, and then looked out severely into space over her gold spectacles, adding, meditatively, "making herself ill with writing."
"Oh, if she's writing letters, I s'pose I mustn't 'sturb her."
"H'm! she's not writing letters."
"What is she writing?"
"Verses, most probably."
"Poetry verses?"
"Well, verses, at any rate," she said, a little grimly. It was noticed that during Valeria's lifetime Mrs. Gano never spoke of her daughter's work except as "verses;" after her death it was all "poetry." "It's high time she was interrupted. Go up-stairs, child," she said, turning to Ethan, "and knock at the door next your own, and say I sent you."