There was something Mrs. Mundy wanted to say to me to-night, and did not say. I love the dear soul. I could not live here without her, could not learn what I am learning without her help and sympathy and loyalty, but at times I wish she were a bit less fond of chatting. She is greatly puzzled. She, too, cannot understand why I have come to Scarborough Square to live, and I am quite certain she thinks it strange I do not tell her. How can I tell that of which I am not sure myself—that is, clearly and definitely sure?
I am not trying to be sure. It is enough that I am here, free to come and go as I choose, to plan my day as I wish, to have time for the things I once had no time for, and why must there always be explanations and reasons and justifications for one's acts? The daily realization each morning, on awaking, that the day is mine, that there are no customs with which to comply, no regulations to follow, no conventions to be conformed to, at the end of two weeks still stirs and thrills and awes me a little, and I am constantly afraid it is not true that I am here to stay. And then again with something of fear and shrinking and uncertainty I realize my bridges are burned and I must stay.
"It's pleased you are with your rooms, I hope, Miss Dandridge?" Hands on her hips, Mrs. Mundy had looked somewhat anxiously at me before going out. "If it's a home-looking place you're after, you've got it, but when you first come down to Scarborough Square it made me feel queer inside to think of your living here, really living. If you think you can be satisfied—"
"I am sure I can be satisfied. Why not?" I smiled and, going over to the window, straightened the curtain which had caught and twisted a fern-leaf growing in its box. "I am a perfectly unincumbered human being who—"
"But an unincumbered woman ain't much of a human being." Mrs. Mundy dropped the afternoon paper she had brought up and stooped to get it. "I mean a woman is made for incumbrances, and if she don't have any—" She hesitated, and looked around the room with its simple furnishings, its firelight and lamplight, its many books and few pictures, its rugs and desk and tables, the gifts of other days, and presently she spoke again. "Being you like so to look out the windows, it's well this house has two front rooms opening into each other. If it's comfortable and convenient that you want to be, you're certainly that, but comforts and conveniences don't keep you company exactly."
"I don't want company yet. You and Bettina are all I need. I haven't said I was to live here a thousand years, or that I wouldn't get tired of myself in less time, but until I do—"
There was a ring at the front-door bell and Mrs. Mundy went to answer it. The puzzled look I often saw in her eyes when talking to me still filled them, but she said nothing more except good night, and when I heard her footsteps in the hall below I went to the door and locked it. This new privacy, this sense of freedom from unescapable interruption, was still so precious, that though an unnecessary precaution, I turned the key that I might feel perfectly sure of quiet hours ahead, and at my sigh of satisfaction I laughed.
Going into my bedroom, which adjoined my sitting-room, I hung in the closet the coat I had left on a chair, put away my hat and gloves, and again looked around, as if they were still strange—the white bed and bureau, the wash-rugs, the muslin curtains, the many contrasts to former furnishings—and again I sighed contentedly. They were mine.
The house I am now living in is indeed an old-fashioned one, but well built and of admirable design. The rooms are few—only eight in all—and four of them I have taken for myself—the upper four. The lower floor is occupied by Mrs. Mundy and Bettina, her little granddaughter. When I first saw the house its condition was discouraging. Not for some time had it been occupied, and repairs of all kinds were needed. To get it in order gave me strange joy, and the weeks in which it was being painted and papered and beautified with modern necessities were of an interest only a person, a woman person, can feel who has never had a home of her own before. When everything was finished, the furnishings in place, and I established, I knew, what I no longer made effort to deny to myself—that I was doing a daring thing. I was taking chances in a venture I was still afraid to face.