"May I come up?" Vesta cried.
"Come, p-chee! Come chee! come tsee! See me! see me! see me! Come p-chee! come see! come see me!"
The last accentuation, in spite of the bird's interference, was sufficiently distinct to amount to an invitation, and with a raising of her eyelids once dependently to heaven, Vesta went up the stairs.
She put her head into a large, long room, which took up the whole contents of the second story, and was lighted on three sides by the small windows she had seen without. It had no carpet or floor-covering of any kind; the fire was gone out upon the chimney-hearth in the end, and the atmosphere, a little chill, was melting before the sunshine which now streamed in at both sides of the fireplace and clearly revealed every object in the apartment,—some clothes-pegs, a wooden table with a blue plate, a blue cup and saucer and a saucepan upon it, and a coarse knife and fork; a large green chest, and a leather hat-box; an old hair trunk fifty years old, and nearly falling to pieces; black silhouettes, in little round ebony frames, of a woman and a man hung over the mantel, and between them a silhouette of a face she had no difficulty in recognizing to be intended for her own.
Stretched upon a low child's bed, of the sort called trundle-bed in those days, which could be wheeled under the high-legged bed of the parents, lay the bridegroom, in his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes, with his steeple-crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and his face as red as burning fever could make it.
Vesta only verified the particulars of the inventory of Milburn's lodge afterwards, her instant attention being drawn to the motionless form of her husband, whose flushed face seemed to indicate a death by strangulation or apoplexy. She went forward and put her hand upon him.
"Mr. Milburn!" she spoke.
"Milburn!" echoed a voice of piercing strength, though ill articulated. She looked around in astonishment, and saw nobody.
"Husband!" Vesta spoke, louder, stooping over him.
"S'band! s'band! See! see!" shouted the wanton voice, almost at her elbow.