"But Timothy is so much happier, Jane. He was old, you know. In the Happy Hunting Grounds, he will be able to frisk about just like other dogs. Wouldn't you like an apple?"
Jane considered this a moment and decided favourably. But her tale of woe was not yet complete. "Mother's ill again," she announced gloomily. "I mustn't play band or nail the slats on the rabbits' hutch. Aunt Amy gave me my dinner on the back porch. I liked that. I wouldn't go in the house, not till you came, Esther."
The straight brows of the elder sister came together in a worried frown.
"You know that is being silly, Jane."
"I don't care."
"You must learn to care. Run now and get the apple and ask Aunt Amy to wash your face."
Jane tripped away obediently, her griefs assuaged by the mere telling of them, and Esther passed into the house by way of the veranda. It was a charming veranda, long and low, opening through French windows directly into the living room which, like itself, was long and low, and charming. There is a charm in rooms which can be felt but not described. It exists apart from the furnishings and even the occupants; it is an essence, haunting, intangible—the soul of the room! only there are many rooms which have no soul.
Through the living room at the Elms vagrant breezes entered, loitered, and drifted out again, leaving behind them scents of sun-warmed flowers. The light there was soft and green. The comfortable chairs invited rest; the polished rosewood table, the bright piano shining in the brightest corner, the smooth old floor in whose rug the colours had long ceased to trouble, the general air of much used comfort, satisfied and refreshed.
Esther loved the room. Her first childish memory was of the rosewood table shining like a pool in the lamplight and of her own wondering face reflected in it, with her father's laughing eyes behind. In every way it was associated with the beginnings of things. The magic of all music began for her in the sweet, thin notes of the old square piano; the key to fairy land lay hidden somewhere in that shelf of well-worn books.
Yet to-night she entered with a hesitating step. It was obvious that she felt no pleasure in the cool greenness. The room was the same room but it was as if the expression on a well-known face had unaccountably changed and become forbidding. The girl sighed as she flung her hat upon a chair.