When at last she awoke she found herself alone in the room, with the morning sunlight stealing through the slats of the window shutters, and gilding bright lines on the white window curtains and on the light gray ground of the carpet and the light gray color of the walls. She saw all this through the festooned white curtains at the foot of her bed. She raised herself up, and then she saw something through the same opening—a bright little coal fire burning in the grate.
Her mother was gone and her baby was gone. Evidently Jennie had slept so soundly that she had not heard their uprising and departure, and she had continued to sleep on until she knew not what hour of the day.
She thought she would get up and dress herself quietly before any one should discover that she was awake.
She slipped out of bed, and the first thing that she saw was her large sea trunk, that had been packed with undiscovered treasure of clothing by the benevolent women who had taken such a warm interest in her welfare, and who had given her an outfit as well as a first-class passage home.
The key of her trunk was in her portemonnaie, in the pocket of her traveling dress. She got it out, unstrapped and unlocked the treasure chest, and lifted the lid.
But just then she heard the voice of her baby crowing loudly in response to another cooing voice that she recognized as her mother’s.
They were having a grand circus together in the parlor, that young grandmother and the baby.
Jennie snatched up the first garment fitting to wear from the top of the trunk, and then dropped the lid and hastily washed and dressed herself, putting on a pretty blue cashmere princess wrapper, trimmed with blue satin ribbons. Then, while still buttoning up, she hastily opened the dividing door and entered the parlor.
Her mother was there, sitting in a low rocker, holding the baby across her lap. Beside her, on the hob of the grate, stood the bowl of “infant food” from which she had been feeding the child.
There was no one else in the room, nor did there need to be to make it very lively there, for the baby was crowing with all the strength of her lungs, while laughing up in the pretty, smiling face, with the cooing voice, bending over her.