Phyl, instead of going to her room, took her seat in the rocker and looked around her. The place held her, something returned to it that had been driven away perhaps by Miss Pinckney’s cheerful and practical presence, the faint odour of lavender still clung to the air, and the silence was unbroken except for a faint stirring of the window curtains now and then to the breeze from outside. Everything was, indeed, just as it had been left, the toilet tidies and all the quaint contraptions of the ’50’s and ’60’s in their places. On the wall opposite the bed hung several water colours evidently the work of that immature artist Mary Mascarene, a watch pocket hung above the bed, a thing embroidered with blue roses, enough to disturb the sleep of any æsthete, yet beautiful enough in those old days. There was only one stain mark in the scrupulous cleanliness and neatness of the place—a panel by the window, once white painted but now dingy-grey and scored with lines. Phyl got up and inspected it more closely. Children’s heights had evidently been measured here. There was a scale of feet marked in pencil, initials, and dates. Here was “M. M.,” probably Mary Mascarene, “2 ft. 6 inches. Nineteen months,” and the date “April, 1845,” and again a year later, “M. M. 2 ft. 9-1/2 inches, May, 1846.” So she had grown three and a half inches in a year. “J. M.”—Juliet without doubt—“3 feet, 3 years old, 1845.” Juliet was evidently the elder—so it went on right into the early ’60’s, mixed here and there with other initials, amongst which Phyl made out “J. J.” and “R. P.,” children maybe staying at the house and measured against the Mascarene children—children now old men and women, possibly not even that. It was in the kindly spirit of Vernons not to pass a painter’s brush over these scratchings, records of the height of a child that lingered only in the memory of the old house.

Phyl turned from them to the bookshelf and the books it contained. “Noble Deeds of American Women,” “Precept on Precept,” “The Dairyman’s Daughter,” and the “New England Primer”—with a mark against the verses left “by John Rogers to his wife and nine small children, and one at the breast, when he was burned at the stake at Smithfield in 1555.” There were also books of poetry, Bryant, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “Powhatan, a metrical romance in seven cantos by Seba Smith,” and several others.

Phyl did something characteristic. She gathered every single book into a pile in her arms and sat down on the floor with them to have a feast. This devourer of books was omnivorous in her tastes, especially if it were a question of sampling, and she had enough critical faculty to enable her to enjoy rubbish. She lingered over Powhatan and its dedication to the “Young People of the United States” and then passed on to the others till she came to a little black book. It was Juliet Mascarene’s diary and proclaimed the fact openly on the first page with the statements: “I am twelve years old to-day and Aunt Susan has given me this book to keep as my diary and not to forget to write each day my evil deeds as well as my good, which I will if I remember them. She didn’t give me anything else. I had to-day a Paris doll from Cousin Jane Pinckney who has winking eyes which shut when you lay her on her back and pantalettes with scallops which take off and on and a trunk of clothes with a little key to it. Father gave me a Bible and I have had other things too numerous for mension.

“Signed Juliet Mascarene.”

with never a date.

Then:

“I haven’t done any evil deeds, or good ones that I can remember, so I haven’t written in this book for maybe a week. Mary and I, we went to a party at the Pinckneys to-day at Bures, the Calhoun children and the Rutledges were there and we had Lady Baltimore cake and a good time. Mary wore her blue organdie and looked very nice and Rupert Pinckney was there, he’s fourteen and wouldn’t talk to the children because they were too small for him, I expect. He told me he was going to have a pony same as Silas Rhett that threw him in the market place Wednesday last and galloped all the way to Battery before he was stopped, only his was to be a better one with more shy in it, said Silas Rhett ought to be tied on next time. Then old Mr. Pinckney came in and shewed us a musical snuff-box and we went home, and driving back Mary kicked me on the shin by axident and I pinched her and she didn’t cry till we’d got home, then she began to roar and mother said it was my ungovernable temper, and I said I wished I was dead.

“I shan’t go to any more parties because it’s always like that after them. Father told me I was to pray for a new heart and not to have any supper but Prue has brought me up a cake of her own making. So that’s one evil deed to put down—It’s just like Mary, any one else would have cried right out in the carriage and not bottled it up and kept it up till she got home.

“This is a Friday and Prue says Friday parties are always sure to end in trouble for the devil puts powder in the cakes and the only way to stop him is to turn them three times round when they’re baking and touch them each time with a forked hazel twig.”

Phyl read this passage over twice. The mention of Prue interested her vastly. Prue even then had evidently been a favourite of Juliet’s.