"He is singularly modest. But that is a characteristic of true merit," said the young lady, laconically. "You came down from Hamilton to-day?"
"I did!" with a slight shrug of the shoulder and a comic lifting of the eyebrows. "Actually arising at four o'clock to take the train. I saw the sun rise, for the first time in twenty years. Your home is very beautiful, Miss Kirke."
"We think so. I ought to, for I was born here and have known no other. But I am not Miss Kirke—only Miss Jessie. My elder sister is in the church. When she comes home, she will play the hostess better than I do."
"Excuse me for saying that you are scarcely a competent judge on that point."
She met the gallantry with the half-petulant expression and gesture that had answered his allusion to his cousin's "new distinction."
"I did not say that to provoke flattery. Apart from the truth that my sister is my superior in nearly everything that goes to make up the dignified lady, she is, just now, in better physical trim than I can boast. I sprained my foot a week ago," smiling, and blushing so brightly as to arouse the spectator's curiosity—"and I am forbidden to use it, as yet."
She turned her face to the window as the crash of a brass band proclaimed that the oration was at an end. While she beat time on the sill to the patriotic strains the visitor inspected the room and its appointments.
It was a square parlor, low-browed and spacious, and wainscoated with oak. Venerable portraits adorned the walls, and the furniture belonged to the era when mahogany was plentiful and upholstery expensive, if one might judge from the disproportion in the quantity of polished wood and that of cushions. A modern piano was there, however, and the carpet was new and handsome. The lounge on which Jessie lay was evidently the workmanship of a neighborhood carpenter, but was far more comfortable than the stately sofas at opposite ends of the apartment, being broad and deeply cushioned, and covered with a pretty chintz pattern. An old china bowl, full of pond-lilies, was upon the centre-table; tall vases of the same material and antique style stood on the mantel, and a precious cabinet of carved wood—Mr. Wyllys wondered if the owners knew how precious—was in a far corner. The most conspicuous ornament of the room was a large picture that hung over the mantel. It was a portrait of the second daughter of the house, taken several years before, for it represented a girl of sixteen, kneeling beside a forest spring. She had just filled a leaf-cup with water, and, in the act of raising it to her lips, glanced at the spectator with a smile of saucy triumph,—a face so radiant with roguish glee as to win the gravest to an answering gleam. The likeness was striking still, and the painting excellent. The figure was spirited, the attitude one of negligent grace, and the accessories to the principal object were well brought in. A vista in the woods revealed the craggy front of Windbeam, and about the old beech, shading the spring, clung a jessamine in full flower.
Mr. Wyllys got up to take a nearer view of the picture, and Jessie looked around.
"That is one of my father's treasures," she said, without a tinge of embarrassment or affectation at seeing him intent upon the scrutiny of her portrait. "It was painted by H——" pronouncing a celebrated name. "He spent a summer in this neighborhood, four years since. He was with us on a picnic to the wishing-well—every county has a wishing-well, hasn't it?—and there made the first sketch of that picture."