“I don't see why.”
“Because it wouldn't.”
Rose laughed, and looked again at herself in the glass.
“Now you had better take off those things and go to bed, and try to go to sleep,” said Sylvia.
“Yes, Aunt Sylvia,” said Rose. But she did not stir, except to turn this way and that, to bring out more colored lights from the jewels.
Sylvia had to mix bread that night, and she was obliged to go. Rose promised that she would immediately go to bed, and kissed her again with such effusion that the older woman started back. The soft, impetuous kiss caused her cheek to fairly tingle as she went down-stairs and about her work. It should have been luminous from the light it made in her heart.
When Henry came home, with a guilty sense of what he was to do next day, and which he had not courage enough to reveal, he looked at his wife with relief at her changed expression. “I declare, Sylvia, you look like yourself to-night,” he said. “You've been looking kind of curious to me lately.”
“You imagined it,” said Sylvia. She had finished mixing the bread, and had washed her hands and was wiping them on the roller-towel in the kitchen.
“Maybe I did,” admitted Henry. “You look like yourself to-night, anyhow. How is Rose?”
“Rose is all right. Young girls are always getting nervous kinks. I took her supper up to her, and she ate every mite, and now I have given her her aunt's jewelry and she's tickled to pieces with it, standing before the looking-glass and staring at herself like a little peacock.” Sylvia laughed with tender triumph.