"Just splendid." Rebecca's eyes danced with happiness. "We're playing the princess in the tower and I'm the princess."
Hyman, his face suddenly grave, looked over the happy, dancing figures in their fantastic dresses. Although he did not know why, he wished at that moment that the children playing in the old attic need never grow up, but might always be carefree and laughing in their idle games. His eyes lingered longest on Rebecca, such a dainty little princess in her yellow silk and pearls and he sighted a little. But all he said was: "If I were you youngsters, I'd play in the garden. The rain's all over and there's a fine rainbow just behind the old chestnut tree."
Washington Irving sat crouched in one of the great arm chairs of the drawing room in Mr. Gratz's house in Philadelphia. His elbow on his knee, he sat with his hand shading his face, his eyes seeking the floor. When Rebecca Gratz entered the room, he seemed about to rise, but with a gesture she urged him to remain seated and took a chair beside him. For a long time they sat there in silence, Rebecca's hands twisting a small package that lay in her lap, her face pale and tired, her dark eyes filled with tears.
Sitting there with the soft candle light falling upon her simple blue dress and white arms, she made a picture which young Irving would have appreciated at any other moment. The slim little princess of the nursery had grown into a graceful young girl of gracious, yet dignified bearing, her abundant hair brushed simply back from her forehead, the gravity of her sweet face increased by the earnestness that never left her large dark eyes, even when she smiled. For even in her gayest moments there was always a hint of gentle gravity about Rebecca Gratz; tonight, when utterly exhausted from watching at the deathbed of her childhood friend, Matilda Hoffman, she looked like a beautiful graven image of Sorrow.
At last Rebecca spoke, her low voice tremulous with tears: "The end was very easy—God was good to her at the last. And I do not think she suffered much lately. Matilda just seemed to fade away, not like one ill, but very tired. She often spoke of you when we were together; that is why I asked brother Hyman to send for you. I thought you would like to hear it all from me."
The young man in the arm chair shifted a little. "Yes, I would like to hear everything from you," he answered, not trusting himself to meet her eyes.
Simply, tenderly, Rebecca told young Irving of the last illness of the young girl whom he had hoped to marry. Now and then her voice broke, for she had loved Matilda Hoffman dearly; but she went bravely on until the end, when she placed the little package in Irving's hand. "She said I was to give you this," she told him, and looked away while he opened the cord with fingers that trembled a little.
The tokens that Washington Irving now gazed upon with tear-dimmed eyes and which were never to leave his possession during all the years when he was to acquire fame and wealth as America's leading author were a little prayer book and Bible. Between the pages of the latter the dead girl had placed a lock of her bright hair; as he raised the worn little book several faded rose leaves fell upon the carpet.
"I pressed one of the roses from her coffin for you," Rebecca told him. "I did not think it would fade so soon."