“You’ve everything very comfortable for your work here,” said Margaret. “I’m glad, for you work so hard.”
“I should have liked your mother to take this room for her drawing-room,” said her father, “but she would not have it. But don’t you notice anything special, little girl?”
She looked all round the familiar walls, at the book-cases encumbered with works on law and jurisprudence, at the portraits of former judges, her ancestors, more rigid than their justice in the painstaking canvases of the mediocre artists, a view of the Lake of Bourget by Hugard, the best of the Savoyan landscapists, and finally the framed map of La Vigie in the place of honour.
“No, nothing,” she declared, after her inspection.
“That’s because you’re looking too high.”
She noticed then that the heavy oak table, large, enough to hold as many briefs as one could possibly desire, had made way for one that was smaller and more elegant, placed so that it had the best of both light and view.
“Oh,” she cried, “why do you put yourself back like this?”
“Why, to make room for your brother.”
“For Maurice? Is he leaving Mr. Frasne’s office?”
“Yes. He’s to have a place near the window here. See how autumn is shaking off the plane-tree leaves. I prefer the spring. There’s a Judas tree beneath the turret that’s a bright red then, and plum trees in blossom.”