“Oh, so many!” She poured the keys upon the table. There were half a hundred of them, of many kinds and sizes; and they were all tagged with little bits of ivory, on which their several uses were written clearly in ink.
“Your mother was very methodical,—very painstaking—”
He shook his head and turned to the fire, as though to hide any show of feeling.
Zelda was turning the keys over in her hand, and she did not look at him. A mist had come into her eyes. She remembered the dark woman who had been so gentle and patient with her childhood. They used to walk together in the old pasture; and they carried their books to a seat that had been built under a great beech where her mother read the quaint tales and old ballads that were her delight. These were the only happy memories she had kept of her mother—the times under the beech, with which her father was not associated.
“I’m sure it’s your time to go to bed, father. You mustn’t let me break in on your ways.” Zelda walked over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “I want to be very good to you, father; and I know we’ll live here very happily. You won’t mind me much—when you get used to me!”
She touched his forehead with her lips.
“Thank you, thank you,”—and there was a helpless note in his voice.
She turned away from him quickly, restored the keys to the basket and ran with it to her room.
The next morning she was down to his seven o’clock breakfast in the cold, forbidding dining-room. She was very gay and made him talk a great deal to her. He had been up for an hour at work in the barn, where he cared for his own horse. He carried the morning newspaper to the table, as he had done for years.
“This will never do, father! You must talk to me and help me to learn the American breakfast habit. I’ll be lonesome if you read at the table.”