"Knock!" I commanded.
Reaching up to the shining old brass knocker she banged it sharply.
The house awoke! White-haired old father came to the door and, first of all, the children sprang to his arms.
Then as they looked around they shouted with joy. "Why, it's just as it was—only nicer," was their verdict.
While Zulime looked keenly and smilingly around, Connie ran from settee to bookcase. "Everything is here—our books, the fireplace."
"Isn't it wonderful!" Mary Isabel exclaimed.
After greeting father Zulime surveyed the result of my six weeks' toil with critical but approving eyes. "I like it. It's much better than I expected. It is wonderful. But we must have new curtains for the windows," she added, with the housewife's attention to details.
The children danced through the brilliantly lighted rooms, but declined to go into the dining-room or to open the door to the kitchen which they remembered only as a mass of black embers and steaming ashes. I did not urge them to do so. On the contrary, I gathered them round me on the restored hearth and talked of the Thanksgiving dinner of the morrow.
As the hour for bedtime came Connie's eyes grew big and dark, and every small unusual sound startled her. Daddy's presence at last reassured them both and they went to sleep and, with only one or two restless intervals, slumbered till daylight.
Two of our neighbors—two capable women, came in next morning to help, and in a few hours the windows were curtained, the linen laid out and the turkey in the oven. Under Zulime's hands the rooms bloomed into homeliness. The kitchen things fell into orderly array. Pictures took their places on the walls, little knick-knacks which had been brought from the city were set on the mantels and bookcases, and when our guests arrived they each and all exclaimed, "No one would ever know you'd had a fire!"