“Do you mind telling me where my bath-room is?” asked Rose, looking vaguely at the doors. She opened one. “Oh, this is a closet!” she cried. “What a lovely large one!”
“There ain't such a thing as a bath-room in this house,” replied Sylvia. “Abrahama White, your aunt, had means, but she always thought she had better ways for her money than putting in bath-rooms to freeze up in winter and run up plumbers' bills. There ain't any bath-room, but there's plenty of good, soft rain-water from the cistern in your pitcher on the wash-stand there, and there's a new cake of soap and plenty of clean towels.”
Rose reddened. Again sophistication felt abashed before dauntless ignorance. She ran to the wash-stand. “Oh, I beg your pardon!” she cried. “Of course this will do beautifully. What a charming old wash-stand!—and the water is delightfully soft.” Rose began splashing water over her face. She had taken off her blue travelling-gown and flung it in a heap over a chair. Sylvia straightened it out carefully, noting with a little awe the rustle of its silk linings; then she hung it in the closet. “I'll hang it here, where it won't get all of a muss,” said she. Already she began to feel a pleasure which she had never known—the pleasure of chiding a young creature from the heights of her own experience. She began harshly, but before she had finished her voice had a tender cadence.
“Oh, thank you,” said the girl, still bending over the wash-basin. “I know I am careless with my things. You see, I have always been so dependent upon my maid to straighten out everything for me. You will do me good. You will teach me to be careful.”
She turned around, wiping her face, and smiling at Sylvia, who felt her very soul melt within her, although she still remained rigidly prim, with her stiff apron-strings standing out at right angles. She looked at the girl's slender arms and thin neck, which was pretty though thin. “You don't weigh much, do you?” she said.
“A little over a hundred, I think.”
“You must eat lots of fresh vegetables and eggs, and drink milk, and get more flesh on your bones,” said Sylvia, and her voice was full of delight, although now—as always, lately—a vague uneasiness lurked in her eyes. Rose, regarding her, thought, with a simple shrewdness which was inborn, that her new cousin must have something on her mind. She wondered if it was her aunt's death. “I suppose you thought a good deal of my aunt who died,” she ventured, timidly.
Sylvia regarded her with quick suspicion. She paled a little. “I thought enough of her,” she replied. “She had always lived here. We were distant-related, and we never had any words, but I didn't see much of her. She kept herself to herself, especially of late years. Of course, I thought enough of her, and it makes me feel real bad sometimes—although I own I can't help being glad to have so many nice things—to think she had to go away and leave them.”
“I know you must feel so,” said Rose. “I suppose you feel sometimes as if they weren't yours at all.”
Sylvia turned so pale that Rose started. “Why, what is the matter? Are you ill?” she cried, running to her. “Let me get some water for you. You are so white.”