"That clock looks awfully old," she said abruptly, pausing before a square high Dutch affair with a ridiculous picture of Mount Vernon, wobbly-columned, let in at the bottom.
"Goodness, yes! That clock—why, that clock was a wedding present to Lorenzo's great aunt Valeria—she was a Swedenborgian, I believe. She used to have trances and she could tell you where things were lost. That chair by the window was her mother's. It's made with wooden nails, dowels, they call 'em."
"Did she live here, too?"
"Yes, indeed. The Winterpines are great hands to stay in one place. And the way they come back to die! I'm half Winterpine myself—he and I were second cousins—and I well remember Uncle Milton Winterpine coming home from Java to die in his bed. He was a sailor, and how I used to hang around and coax him to tell me what he'd seen! I remember how he staggered into the house—Mother Winterpine was living then.
"'Here, Esther, here's a fifty-pound sack of Old Gov'ment Javvy for ye, green, and fit for the president's table as soon's it gits ripe,' he says, 'and you won't have to nurse me long;' and we got his boots off and helped him to bed. He never left it. He brought me a parrot, that trip, sort of indigo color and pink. It used to set me thinking of the hot countries and pineapples and natives, and those tall trees with all the leaves on top—palms, I guess I mean. It seems the stars are lower, there, and look bigger; did you ever see the Southern Cross?"
"Oh, yes. It's like any other stars. The first officer on the P & O line always asks me to come and see it. Then he proposes. J. G. plays poker the whole trip. He can't lose. He says it's tiresome."
The strange dialogue went on for what might have been an hour. Far ports and foreign streets, full sails and thronged inns, the fountains of paved courts, the market squares of dark and vivid nations, blossomed from the tongue of this chair-bound woman in her farmhouse prison; and from the blind, unhappy voyager came halting, telegraphic phrases: climate and train schedules and over-lavish fees, miles and meals and petty miseries. No sunset had stained her hurried way, no handed flowers from shy street children had sweetened it. And ever and again she returned insistently to the barnyard interests of the Winterpines!
"See here!" she burst out suddenly, "I'll tell you what I'll do! I told J. G. that I wouldn't go another step with him—mascot or no mascot. He wants to go over the Himalayas—to start next week—he has an idea. But if you'll go, I'll take you! What do you say? My guest, of course: it don't cost you a penny."
The woman turned utterly white. Where her knuckles gripped the arms of the chair they showed a bluish tinge.
"Me? Me?" she whispered. Her eyes fell to her helpless knees.