Yet the cottage was the daintiest of places, for the mother would not let the memory of an ugly home lie on their minds, when the little girls grew older.
The sitting-room had unlined weatherboard walls, varnished however to a warm brown seemliness. White matting was on the floor, white soft curtains blew about the ever open window, round which, in early summer, wisteria hung heavy with sweetness. There were only two chairs, but who minded that when there was a comfortable sofa, made soft and inviting with cushions of delicate flowered chintz, and chintz-covered box seats for the small ones? And [163] ]there were some of the old home pictures, and books and photographs and little prettinesses, and the dearly bought piano was there to while away long evening hours.
Mrs. Wise always sighed as she entered the pretty room.
[Boots went to the cobbler’s for repairs.]
“But imagine white matting with five great boys about!” she used to say. Nevertheless the first spring saw fresh muslin curtains brightening her own rooms, and the doctor’s pleasure in them was so great, that she was stimulated to other touches of beauty about her home.
She even began to take thought for what she [164] ]should wear—a thing she had forgotten to do for years. Clif was the unconscious cause of this.
He was hanging over his mother’s chair one evening on the verandah, talking happily to her for once about Westward Ho! which he had just finished; and for once she had not sought to improve the occasion by deducing a moral from the story, although she had a vague and uneasy consciousness, as the lad rattled on, that she ought to do so.
In the midst of the talk Mrs. Conway passed down the road, a fresh, girlish-looking figure in white with a black band at her waist, and a white chip hat, muslin-covered, against the sun. Phyl was hanging on her arm, Dolly and Weenie in lavender washing frocks were running races in front of her.
Clif’s eyes followed them, then came back to his mother in her drab-coloured and unbeautiful clothes.