CHAPTER VI
THE MORRISES
The next day it rained and the next, and Mrs. Hart grew very restless and tired. But she had promised to stay a week, and she would do it, and then say good-by for ever to the humdrum life as it went on at the farmhouse. Connie, on the contrary, was very happy. She could not go out on her sled, it is true, but six of the barn cats had been allowed entrance to the house, and when she tired of these Kenneth took her to the ball-room, which filled her with ecstasy and set her in motion at once.
“I’ll show you I can do it,” she said, when Kenneth told her of the many dances given there when the house was a tavern and his father a boy, and that he was trying to learn. “I’ll show you,” and she went pirouetting up and down the long room, whirling like a little fairy and holding her short skirt as she had seen older ones do in the dancing class she attended. She knew a great deal which Kenneth did not know, and coached him for hours during the rainy days, proving so good a teacher that when the lessons were over he felt that he had learned nearly as much as during the whole term at Millville.
The third day the rain ceased, the air was fresher and the sun came out warm and bright. At the breakfast table Mr. Stannard remarked that one of the blinds of the Morris house had come open, and Kenneth must go and shut it.
“I, too,” Connie said, eager to go where Kenneth went.
She had looked with a great deal of interest at the silent house, which Kenneth told her belonged to Harry, and was eager to go over it. Kenneth carried her in his arms across the muddy road, and put her down inside the gate on the gravel walk, which was wet and full of weeds. The grounds were large and showed signs of former care and beauty, but were now mere sodden patches of decay. There had once been a fountain fed from a spring further up the hill, and the central figure was a little boy and girl under an umbrella. But the pipes were burst and the supply of water cut off. The basin was crumbling, and only the boy and girl stood bravely up, defying the elements and time.
“Now let’s go in,” Connie said, after admiring the boy and girl, and they went into the wide hall, with its broad stairs and wide railing of solid oak. “It seems as if the folks were all dead,” Connie said, as their footfalls made hollow sounds and their voices echoed through the great high rooms into which they had passed, the two parlors with folding doors between and a large bow window looking out upon a lawn terraced down the hill to the south.
There were handsome marble mantels and inlaid hearths and carved woodwork and signs of former grandeur everywhere, and Connie, who appreciated it all, held her breath as she went through the lower rooms and then ascended the stairs and followed Kenneth through one room after another, with here and there pieces of furniture standing in them. Young as she was, Connie’s perceptions were mature and quick, and she recognized the difference between this house and the one across the way.
“Grand folks used to live here. Where are they? Tell me about them,” she said, as they stood in what had been Mrs. Morris’ bed-chamber, where Harry was born and his mother had died, and where a mahogany bedstead and bureau, with a stationary wash-stand and silver faucet were still standing.
“All dead but Hal,” Kenneth answered, as they sat down in a deep seat of one of the windows.