A minute before, Marion had decided that every one was going to blame her because she had forgotten to call at the post-office, and had made up her mind to bear the reproaches in mournful silence. So she naturally found it rather provoking to be offered a ride instead. However, she was too much excited to sulk just now.
"I don't think I will, Uncle Alick; Aunt Baby will want some help," said she, amiably enough.
"Well, then, run and call grandfather and give him the news, and then go up and open the windows of the east room and put on the sheets that hang on the foot of the bed," said Miss Baby. "Make the room look pretty and neat, and I will see to matters down here."
Marion went to work with both zeal and judgment, for she was by no means wanting in sense when she could condescend to "give her mind to small details," as she expressed it, or, in other words, to mind what she was about. She made up the bed neatly with the white home-made linen which Aunt Baby had been airing for a week, supplied the wash-stand with water and clean towels, and put a nosegay of sweet spring flowers on the table. When she had finished, she surveyed her work with no very satisfied expression. Many people would have thought the room an inviting one, but not so Marion. The home-made carpet on the floor, the old-fashioned, high-post bedstead with its chintz hangings, the high, round-fronted bureau with a desk at the top, were all dreadfully old-fashioned and shabby in her eyes.
"I wish we ever could have anything like anybody else," said she to herself. "How these old things will look to Aunt Christian after all she has seen! I do think grandfather might open his purse far enough to buy some new furniture. The Bryants are not so well off as we are, and they bought new furniture for their front rooms, up-stairs and down."
She went down to the wide, cool kitchen, which was always the dining-room in the warm weather, and found the tea-table already prepared with a set of bluish-white china painted with little bunches of roses and forget-me-not. The saucers, large and deep, and the little round cups without handles, showed the date of their manufacture. Miss Baby was in the milk-room skimming cream and making other hospitable preparations, and a delicious odour of cooking came in from the back kitchen.
Marion uttered an angry exclamation:
"Now, that is too bad, to set the table in the kitchen; I declare, I won't have it so."
She at once began to reverse the arrangement when her grandfather came in:
"What are you doing, lass?"