“Well, I hope—I should hate to think he couldn’t get anything he wanted in this world,” said Nan.
Jerry had been deeply troubled at times by the fear that his adored Cecil might be interested in Nan, and the smile that accompanied her last remark was the least bit ambiguous. With all his assurance he was at heart a humble person, and he never ceased to marvel at Nan’s tolerance of him. It was not for him to question the ordinances of Heaven. If Cecil and Nan—
Nan began drawing on her gloves. When they reached the street she explained that she was going to the Farley house to gather up some of her traps that she had left behind. Fully conscious of his sudden soberness and perhaps surmising the cause of it, she lightened his burdened spirit by asking him to come out soon to see her, and boarded a street car....
This was her first visit “home” since she had left the house to go to Fanny Copeland’s. In her hurried flight she had taken only a trunk and a suit-case, but her summer gowns and a number of odds and ends remained to be packed and moved.
The colored maid, who had only vaguely grasped the meaning of Nan’s sudden departure, admitted her with joyous exclamations.
“About time yo’ ’s comin’ back, Miss Nan. Mistah Thu’ston came up heah and tole me and Joshua to stay right along. I guess Mistah Fa’ley’s been turnin’ ovah in his grave ’bout yo’ runnin’ away. He was mighty ca’less not to fix his will the way it ought t’ been. Yo’ ’ll find yo’ room just the way yo’ left it. Mistah Thu’ston said fo’ me to keep things shined up just the way they always was.”
Nan explained that she had merely come to pack her remaining things and asked Joshua to bring up a trunk from the cellar. She filled the trunk and added to the summer frocks articles from her desk and other personal belongings that she wished to keep for their various associations.
When she had finished, she crossed the hall to Farley’s room, rather from force of habit than by intention. She ran her hand across the shelves that represented his steadfast literary preferences that had never been altered in her recollection: “Pickwick,” Artemus Ward; a volume of Petroleum V. Nasby’s writings; Franklin’s “Autobiography”; Grant’s “Memoirs”; Mark Twain, in well-worn original first editions, including the bulky “Innocents Abroad” and “Roughing It.” She resolved to take the “Life on the Mississippi,” from which she had so often read to him in his last year. She rummaged in the closet for an album containing crude old-fashioned likenesses of Mr. and Mrs. Farley and a series of photographs of herself that marked the swift-moving years from the time she became a member of their household.
In a last slow survey of the room her eyes fell upon the portrait of Mrs. Farley that had arrested her with its kind motherly glance on the night of her temptation. She reflected that her right to remove anything from the house was questionable, but she meant to ask Thurston to give her the portrait when the house was finally disposed of.
As she lifted the frame and shook the wire loose from the hook, a paper that had been thrust behind the picture slipped over the mantel-edge with a soft rustling and fell at her feet. She laid the portrait on the bed and picked up the paper.