It was Bell Adams who met her at the door to-day. The expression on her face was such as to puzzle Anna and rather to frighten her. She spoke in hoarse whispers and made strange grimaces, and suddenly Anna’s heart failed her. But she had promised. Slipping off the baby’s wraps hastily, she took him and hurried to the door of Mrs. Langley’s room without stopping to remove her own jacket. She opened the door desperately. Just within, she paused. She expected a change, but—what had happened?
CHAPTER XVI
THE blinds were raised high and the sun streamed in over so brilliant a Brussels carpet that the carefully cherished one in Miss Penny’s parlour would have seemed almost dingy beside it. And the dimness having vanished, the room seemed to have expanded—to have thrust out its boundary walls in all directions. Extra furniture had been moved in—though not, probably, on that account—which imparted an hospitable if rather grotesquely amusing air. There were chairs of all shapes and sizes, tables and stands, hassocks, an extra what-not, an Indian cabinet, and such an array of tidies, antimacassars, lambrequins, and afghans as only a country parsonage can collect through various periods and many years of ‘fancy-work.’ One of the larger of the extra tables held the parlour clock, which was surmounted by a bronze statuette representing a barefooted maiden with a pitcher, and the other, the great silver water-pitcher with elves clambering over the handle which had been the wedding gift from the church. The medicine bottles had been cleared away and the stand that had held them was adorned only by the framed photograph of little Ella May’s monument resting on a gay mat of shaded red worsteds.
Nevertheless it was not this transformation which the other Miller girl noticed first, nor was it considerable in comparison with the real transformation. After a vague, momentary realisation of the sunshine and the gorgeous purple and crimson roses of the border of the carpet, the girl was lost in wonder as she stared incredulously at the figure in the familiar yet strange arm chair.
Mrs. Langley—if it were, indeed, Mrs. Langley?—wore a gown of warm grey shading into lilac with a lace fichu fastened by a large, handsome cameo brooch. Her parted hair was brought back so loosely as considerably to disguise the sharpness of her temples. Her eyes looked softer and her skin less sallow even in the strong light; while, most remarkable of all, the appalling hollows in her cheeks had disappeared, taking with them almost all the grimness of the mouth. And when she actually smiled, partly with her eyes yet also with her lips, Anna lost her head. She forgot all the neat, deprecatory little speeches she had prepared for every emergency save this overwhelming surprise.
“O Mrs. Langley! you look simply swell!” she cried, dropping into a three-cornered chair that might have seemed perilously near. “And here’s little Joe, Junior, come way across the city from the Hollow to the Bowery to tell you he’s going to celebrate his first Christmas in ten days.”
She held her breath. But the baby surveyed the scene calmly with that new keenness of observation of his. Apparently nothing suggested to him that it was the same wherein he had been so terrified a fortnight since. He stared coolly at the lady in the flowered chair, the lotos blossoms and birds of paradise of which hadn’t been visible in the darkened room, scrutinizing her gravely but without either recognition or disapproval.
None the less, it was only with a tremendous effort of will that Anna rose and deliberately put the child into Mrs. Langley’s arms. For a moment her heart stood still. But to-day there was no scream. Little Joe did not even seek to come back to Anna. His gravity seemed, indeed, rather to lift than to deepen. He cuddled down in the stranger’s arms in a manner that implied an absent-minded desire to be comfortable while he completed his survey. For he made haste to study the bright colours of the worsted mat. Thence his gaze roved to the photograph in the frame. He looked at it hard, glanced at the lady who held him then turned to Anna.
“Baa-baa!” he exclaimed suddenly, very clearly and rather dramatically and stretched out his little hand towards the picture.