One of her earliest recollections was of taking tea at the Gilpin house in company with Genevieve and Allan Whittredge. Mild, fair-faced Miss Anne and her grim-visaged, cross-grained brother were a strangely assorted pair. Celia's childish soul had been filled with awe on these occasions. She had difficulty in keeping her seat in the stiff old haircloth chairs, or in crossing the polished floor of the drawing-room without slipping.
At one end of this room stood the ancient spinet, long ago the property of her own great-grandmother, which she was told would some day be hers. Celia had been proud of this until Miss Anne, displaying her chief treasures, Patricia's miniature and ring, remarked upon Genevieve's likeness to her great-aunt. Genevieve, with the ring on her finger, looked complacently over her shoulder at the long mirror, and Celia was smitten with sudden envy. A great-grandmother called Saint Cecilia was not half so interesting as a beautiful great-aunt with a romantic love story; and an old and useless spinet not to be compared to a ring like Patricia's. That the ring was to be Genevieve's she never doubted.
Allan had made fun of his sister and treated heirlooms in general with scorn, calling Celia to look at a print of Jonah in knee breeches and shoe buckles, emerging front the mouth of the whale. Allan always saw the fun in things.
Between those days and the present there was a great gulf fixed. She had resolutely put away from her all these memories, and to-day she was annoyed that they should return in such force. They brought only pain to her tired heart.
Her hands fell in her lap, and she gazed with unseeing eyes at the hills. After all, Patricia, mourning her lover, had not known the bitterest sorrow.
The thought of her work, which must be done, aroused her. "What a weak creature I am, thinking my lot harder than that of any one else," she exclaimed, and taking up her needle she determinedly fixed her mind on the present. There was the suit Tom needed, and the grocery bill that should be paid the first of the month. She must work hard and not waste time in regrets. The summer that meant leisure and pleasure for many, meant only added cares for her.
A surprising announcement broke in upon these dreary thoughts: "This is the Forest of Arden!"
The voice was a sweet, girlish one, and came from somewhere behind the arbor, but the vines grew so thick she could not get a glimpse of the speaker. Celia went on with her work, feeling at first a little annoyed that her quiet should be disturbed, yet the suggestion of sylvan joy in the words grew upon her. The Forest of Arden—where they fleeted the time carelessly—what a rest for tired spirits it seemed to offer!
"If we will, we may travel always in the Forest, where the birds sing and the sunlight sifts through the trees—" the same voice repeated. A stir of wind set the leaves rustling, and Celia lost the rest.
"That means it will all come right in the end."