A light pretty matting was laid upon the floor. The old-fashioned bedstead, put together with ropes, and on which she had slept when a girl in Ridgefield, was sold to a Portuguese woman, and its place supplied by a single white bedstead with a canopy over the head. She had seen a bed like this at the Ralston House in a child’s room, and was imitating it as far as possible. That was brass, with hangings of point d’esprit, while hers was iron, with hangings of dotted muslin, but the effect was much the same. The chest of drawers which had belonged to her mother was moved into her own room and a small white pine bureau, with blue forget-me-nots painted on it, put in its place. The square stand was covered with a fine white damask towel, with a Bible and Hymn Book laid upon it. The rocker was white, the curtains at the windows were white, the toilet articles were white, everything was white. “A White Room,” Paul Ralston christened it, for he saw it on the day the last touches were put to it and just before he started to join Clarice in New York. Miss Hansford was adjusting the pillow-shams when she heard Paul below calling to her.
“Up here in Elithe’s room. Come and see it,” she said, and Paul ran up the narrow stairs two at a time and stood at the door, uncertain whether he ought to cross the threshold or not.
A young girl’s sleeping apartment was a sacred place, and he hesitated a moment until Miss Hansford bade him come in and see if it wasn’t pretty.
“I should say it was,” he replied, as he stepped into the room, bending his tall figure to keep clear of the roof where it slanted down on the sides. “It’s lovely, but a little low in some places. A great strapping six-footer like me might knock his brains out some dark night on the rafters, but Elithe is short. It will just suit her. Call it the White Room.”
He was very enthusiastic, and in his enthusiasm hit his head two or three times as he walked about, admiring everything, saying it lacked nothing but flowers, and suggesting that Miss Hansford get some pond lilies the day Elithe arrived.
“I’d do it myself,” he said, “only I’m going away and shan’t be here when she comes. I’ll tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll have Tom bring over some white roses in the morning, if you will let him know when you expect her.”
Paul’s approval was sufficient for Miss Hansford, and after he was gone she dropped the shades over the windows and closed the room until the morning of the day when Elithe was expected. Tom brought the white roses, arranged by the gardener in a basket, which stood on the dressing-table, while on the stand at the head of the bed was a bowl of pond lilies which Miss Hansford had ordered, and which took her back to the river and pond in Ridgefield, where they had grown in such profusion, and where the boy Roger had gathered them for her. Roger had been gone from her twenty years and more; other boys gathered the lilies in Ridgefield. She was an old woman, and Roger’s girl was coming to her.
“I believe I’m glad, too,” she said, as she inhaled the odor of the blossoms, gave an extra pat to the bed and went down to the kitchen, wondering what she should cook for supper that would please Elithe. “Girls like cake and custard,” she said. “I’ll have both, and use the little custard cups with covers that were mother’s. There’s only four left of the dozen. ’Taint likely she’ll eat more than two to-night, and two to-morrow night. I don’t want any. Four will be enough.”
The cake was made and the custards, too, in the pretty china cups which Miss Hansford calculated were nearer a hundred years old than twenty. Never but once had she used them since she lived on the island, and that on the occasion of the Presiding Elder’s stay with her. Since then they had reposed quietly in her cupboard, with her best china. This she brought out now for Elithe, together with her best linen and napkins and silver. Had she been willing to acknowledge herself capable of such weakness, she would have known that she was guilty of a good deal of pride as she anticipated Elithe’s surprise at the grandeur which awaited her.
The morning was long after everything was in readiness, and the afternoon seemed interminable until she saw the boat at the wharf and knew her clock was an hour behind time. She had seen Tom Drake drive by in the Ralston carriage and wondered where and for whom he was going. That he would bring Elithe to her she never dreamed and when she saw him coming towards her cottage with a slip of a girl in the seat behind him, she exclaimed, “I snum if I don’t believe that’s Elithe!” and hurried out to meet her.