“Look here,” he said, “I’m going to keep my eye on that boy of yours and your wife. I intend to make the house decent, and see that the boy has a chance to learn something, and take care they’re not too hard run. But I’m going to keep my eye on you too—at least, I shall see that some one else does—and if you make things uncomfortable you’ll be made pretty uncomfortable yourself, that’s all. I’d advise you to try the new recreation of going to work. It’ll be good for your health. Sort of athletics.”
And he kept his word.
It was a marvel of a holiday. It is not possible that among all the holiday-makers there were two others who were nearer the rapture of Paradise than these two little Pilgrims.
When it was at an end they went home with John Holt. It was a wonderful home-going. The house was a wonderful house. It was one of the remarkable places that some self-made western men have built and furnished, with the aid of unlimited fortunes and the unlimited shrewd good sense which has taught most of those of them whose lives have been spent in work and bold ventures that it is more practical to buy taste and experience than to spend money without it. John Holt had also had the aid and taste of a wonderful little woman, whose life had been easier and whose world had been broader than his own. Together they had built a beautiful and lovable home to live in. It contained things from many countries, and its charm and luxury might well have been the result of a far older civilization.
“Don’t you think, Robin,” said Meg, in a low voice, the first evening, as they sat in a deep-cushioned window-seat in the library together, “don’t you think you know what She was like?”
They had spoken together of her often, and somehow it was always in a rather low voice, and they always called her “She.”
Robin looked up from the book he held on his knee. It was a beautiful volume She had been fond of.
“I know why you say that,” he said. “You mean that somehow the house is like her. Yes, I’m sure it is, just as Aunt Matilda’s house is like her. People’s houses are always like them.”
“This one is full of her,” said Meg. “I should think John Holt would feel as if she must be in it, and she might speak to him any moment. I feel as if she might speak to me. And it isn’t only the pictures of her everywhere, with her eyes laughing at you from the wall and the tables and the mantels. It’s herself. Perhaps it is because she helped John Holt to choose things, and was so happy here.”
“Perhaps it is,” said Robin; and he added, softly, “this was her book.”