"It was really much nicer, meeting this way," she said, giving me her hand. "We shall expect you at seven."
I found them on the veranda, which had been transformed since my last glimpse of it. Rugs, wicker furniture, wall-pockets of flowers, and paper lanterns dropped over the electric lights gave it the appearance of a prettily set scene. She came toward me, a slender figure in white. She seemed taller in white; as she took a few steps toward me, I was aware of a stateliness I had missed at the shore. A queenly young person, but as unaffectedly cordial and friendly as in the bright morning sunlight.
"Mrs. Farnsworth, Mr. Singleton."
Mrs. Farnsworth was a pleasant-faced, white-haired woman with remarkably fine, dark eyes. If the positions had been changed—if Mrs. Farnsworth had been my uncle's choice of a wife, the situation would have been much more real. I instantly liked Mrs. Farnsworth. She uttered a few commonplaces in an uncommonplace tone without pausing in her knitting. Mrs. Bashford had been knitting too, and as she sat down she took up her yarn and needles. It was a sweater, I think; it doesn't matter. What matters is that her hands moved swiftly and deftly. Her manner of knitting was charming. She knew that I was watching her hands and remarked with a graceful turn of the head:
"For an English boy somewhere! I began by knitting for my brother and cousins, but"—her head bent lower—"that isn't for me to do any more." Her eyes, turned upon me for a moment, were bright with tears.
I was speaking of the splendid valor of Englishmen I had known in France when Antoine announced dinner.
It had been years since the house had known a woman's hand, and it was astonishing how humanized it had become in a few hours. The long dining-room, always a bare, forbidding place, had been reduced to cosey proportions by screens, and a small round table replaced the massive, oblong affair that always looked as though it had been built into the house by the carpenters.
"I found those lovely screens in the garret and thought we might as well enjoy them, and that Lang Yao jar you see on the sideboard oughtn't to be hidden in the vault."
"I am sure Uncle Bash would be happy to know you care for these things so much," I said, noting that the white roses she had chosen for the jar—I knew the choice was hers—served to emphasize the deep red of its exquisite glaze.
"I am among the unelect," remarked Mrs. Farnsworth. "When I am told that such things are beautiful I am immediately convinced. I say they are beautiful, and that is enough."