She used the water—alas for selfish human nature!—to the last warm drop and went gayly back to her little room with no emotions whatever for the poor other boarders, soon to find themselves wrathfully hot-waterless. And then—she thoughtlessly curled down on the bed, and slept and slept and slept! She wakened dimly in time for the one o'clock dinner, dressed, and ate it in a half-sleep. She went back upstairs planning a trolley-ride that should take her out into the country, where a long walk might be had. And midway in changing her shoes she lay back across the bed and—fell asleep again. The truth was, Phyllis was about as tired as a girl can get.
She waked at dusk, with a jerk of terror lest she should have overslept her time for going out. But it was only six. She had a whole hour to prink in, which is a very long time for people who are used to being in the library half-an-hour after the alarm-clock wakes them.
Some houses, all of themselves, and before you meet a soul who lives in them, are silently indifferent to you. Some make you feel that you are not wanted in the least; these usually have a lot of gilt furniture, and what are called objects of art set stiffly about. Some seem to be having an untidy good time all to themselves, in which you are not included.
The De Guenther house, staid and softly toned, did none of these things. It gave the Liberry Teacher, in her neat, last year's best suit, a feeling as of gentle welcome-home. She felt contented and belonging even before quick-smiling, slender little Mrs. De Guenther came rustling gently in to greet her. Then followed Mr. De Guenther, pleasant and unperturbed as usual, and after him an agreeable, back-arching gray cat, who had copied his master's walk as exactly as it can be done with four feet.
All four sat amiably about the room and held precise and pleasant converse, something like a cheerful essay written in dialogue, about many amusing, intelligent things which didn't especially matter. The Liberry Teacher liked it. It was pleasant beyond words to sit nestlingly in a pluffy chair, and hear about all the little lightly-treated scholarly day-before-yesterday things her father had used to talk of. She carried on her own small part in the talk blithely enough. She approved of herself and the way she was behaving, which makes very much for comfort. There was only once that she was ashamed of herself, and thought about it in bed afterwards and was mortified; when her eyes filled with quick tears at a quite dry and unemotional—indeed, rather a sarcastic—quotation from Horace on the part of Mr. De Guenther. But she smiled, when she saw that they noticed her.
"That's the first time I've heard a Latin quotation since I came away from home," she found herself saying quite simply in explanation, "and Father quoted Horace so much every day that—that I felt as if an old friend had walked in!"
But her hosts didn't seem to mind. Mr. De Guenther in his careful evening clothes looked swiftly across at Mrs. De Guenther in her gray-silk-and-cameo, and they both nodded little satisfied nods, as if she had spoken in a way that they were glad to hear. And then dinner was served, a dinner as different—well, she didn't want to remember in its presence the dinners it differed from; they might have clouded the moment. She merely ate it with a shameless inward joy.
It ended, still to a pleasant effortless accompaniment of talk about books and music and pictures that Phyllis was interested in, and had found nobody to share her interest with for so long—so long! She felt happily running though everything the general, easy taking-for-granted of all the old, gentle, inflexible standards of breeding that she had nearly forgotten, down in the heart of the city among her obstreperous, affectionate little foreigners.
They had coffee in the long old-fashioned salon parlor, and then Mr. De Guenther straightened himself, and Mrs. De Guenther folded her veined, ringed old white hands, and Phyllis prepared thrilledly to listen. Surely now she would hear about that Different Line of Work.