"Where?" I asked.
She laughed and galumphed across the room and back again without looking at me, before she answered. Then she stopped at the door and called up for Leah to bring down her bunch of keys. When these had come, she knelt in front of the window-seat and unlocked a cupboard below it. From this she brought out a little model house, built of pasteboard, perfect in all its details.
It had windows of mica, behind which were white sashes and lace-paper curtains. The house, an old-fashioned New England homestead, was placed in a little yard of green velvet divided by paths of sandpaper, and set out with toy trees. A child would have loved it. A fairy would have appropriated it at first sight. As an architect, the model made a great appeal to me. It had charm and atmosphere, good massing, good proportions, detail and color. I complimented her enthusiastically.
She was poking about the little front porch and the platform in the rear, where a miniature ash-barrel stood, adjusting the doors and blinds with her slender forefinger, when she frowned and said:
"Why, some one's broken that tree in front! Leah, have you been touching this house? There's a blind gone, too!"
"No, Miss Joy, I haven't touched it!" Leah protested.
Miss Fielding stamped her foot. "You must have! It was all right when I left it here last. Who could have done it, if you didn't?"
Leah grew more and more uneasy, but stood her ground. "Indeed, I didn't touch it, Miss Joy!" she repeated.
"You're all the time meddling with my things. I've caught you at it before. You know altogether too much. Well, go back to your work now!"
Leah left in silence, and Miss Fielding put back the house and locked it up. A hard look came into her face that I had not seen before.