“It’s a pe’fect jewel-case of a house!” said the Captain, as he moved with the trooping company through the mansion.
“Indeed, indeed it is,” said Mrs. Tolliver to Alice; “the jewel, whoever it may be, is to be envied.”
“I hope,” said Jim to Josie, “that you agree with Mrs. Tolliver?”
“Oh, yes,” said Josie, “but you attach far too much importance to my judgment. If it is any comfort to you, however, I want to praise—everything—unreservedly.”
“I won’t know, for a while,” said Jim, “whether it is to be my house only, or home in the full sense of the word.”
“One doesn’t know about that, I fancy,” said Cecil; “for a long time—”
“I mean to know soon,” said Jim.
Josie was looking intently at the carving on one of the chairs, and paid no heed, though the remark seemed to be addressed to her.
“What I mean, you know,” said Cecil, “is that, no matter how well the house may be built and furnished, it’s the associations, the history of the place, the things that are in the air, that makes ’Ome!”
There was in the manner of his capitalizing the word as he uttered it, and in the unwonted elision of the H, that tribute to his dear island which the exiled Briton (even when soothed by the consolation offered by street-car systems to superintend, and rose-pink blondes to serve), always pays when he speaks of Home.