“That’s it!” Godfrey exclaimed. “I’ve tried and tried to think who Gertie was like. It’s Edith. There’s a resemblance; only Gertie will be the handsomer of the two when she is grown.”
“My dears,” Miss Rossiter began, in the tone she always assumed when displeased or grieved; “it seems to me your conversation is not very elevating. What possible interest can you feel in those people at the cottage? There can be nothing in common between us, even if they have the furniture of your poor mother’s room. Godfrey, I was very much hurt when you wrote Perry to take dear Emily’s bedstead and bureau down there. Suppose they were old, they were very dear to me, and I would gladly have had them in my room. The bedstead is much handsomer than the one I’m sleeping on now, and should be sacred to us because your mother and my sister died on it.”
Miss Rossiter’s handkerchief was at her eyes, and her voice trembled as she spoke. But Godfrey did not reply at once, and when he did, he said:
“I did not suppose you’d care to have that bedstead in your room, or you should have had it. Perhaps I can manage it yet.”
“No, no, I beg; let it be as it is. I can bear it,” Miss Rossiter said, with the air of a martyr, while all the time she knew that no amount of money could induce her to sleep on a bed where she had seen a person die.
She would not confess that she was superstitious, but she was, and until this moment, when the desire to find fault with something was strong within her, it had never occurred to her that she wanted the furniture for her own use. She merely did not wish it removed for her sister’s successor. If it had been good enough for a Rossiter it surely was good enough for Edith Lyle, and in addition to all this, it hurt her to know that common people like Mrs. Rogers and her daughter were to stretch their democratic bodies on a bed where Emily’s aristocratic limbs had once reposed. With her handkerchief to her eyes there fell a chill on the spirits of the young people, who sat silent until Godfrey said, suddenly:
“By the way, girls, I’ve not told you a word about Bob Macpherson, the artist. I meant to bring him up with me, but he was so much absorbed in the galleries and studios that he decided to wait a little. You are sure to like him.”
“Where did you pick him up?” Julia asked; and Godfrey replied:
“In Rome. I wrote about it at the time. He is an artist from pure love of it rather than necessity, for he has money enough and comes of a good Scotch family.”
“Didn’t you write us there was a title in it?” Julia asked.