“You always guess.”
“Because your pictures are so true. I like to look at people and places through your eyes.”
Judith smiled, and looking a moment into the fire, began again: “A fence, an old fence, and a terrace, not green, but rather dried up, then a lawn, with a horse-chestnut, a big, big horse-chestnut tree on each side the brick path, and then up three steps to a long piazza: the house is painted white, with white shutters instead of blinds, and there are three dormer windows in the roof; these windows make the third story. I wish I could see inside, but I never did. Perhaps I shall some day. ‘Some day’ is my fairyland, and may you be there to see. That day Cousin Don came to take me walking he took me past the place; he said some day when you could spare me longer he would take me in, he wanted me to see the brown girl who lives there; but there she stood on the piazza, the door was open and she was going in; she was a brown girl, all in brown with a brown hat and brown feather; a brown face too—I love browns; she happened to turn and she tossed a laugh down to Cousin Don. It was a pretty laugh, with something in it I didn’t understand; it was a laugh—that—didn’t—tell—everything. I told Don so. He said: ‘Nonsense!’ I don’t know what he meant.”
“That was Marion Kenney, and the old house on Summer Avenue,” guessed Judith’s mother, who knew the story of the brown girl from Don’s enthusiastic recitals.
Her mother’s voice was more rested; Judith pondered again.
“That was a city picture; this is a country picture. It is the beautiful, beautiful country, even if the grass is dead, and the trees bare; it is the February country in New Jersey; there are clouds, and clouds, and clouds overhead; and a brook with the sun shining on it, and a bridge with a stone wall on each side, a little bit of a stone wall, and stone arches where the water flows through; perhaps it rushes because the snow is melting so fast; there’s a garden with no flowers in it yet, but there are flower stalks, and bushes, and bushes; and a path up to the kitchen door, for the garden is down in a hollow; the kitchen shines, it is so clean, and smells, oh, how it does smell of graham bread, and hot molasses cake, and cup custards, and apple pie—but we can’t smell in a picture,” she laughed.
“I can—in your pictures,” said her mother, echoing the laugh very softly.
“And the dearest old sitting-room—Aunt Rody will call it ‘the room’ as if it were the only room in the house; there’s a rag carpet on the floor—Aunt Rody dotes on rag carpets; so would I if it were not for the endless sewing of the rags—and there’s a chair with rockers, and on the top of the back of it a gilded house and trees almost rubbed off, and on the back a calico cushion tied on with red dress braid, and a calico cushion in the bottom, and the dearest old lady sits in it and sews, and talks, and reads the Bible and the magazines; there’s a chair without rockers for the old lady who never rocks or does easy pleasant things, and hates it when other people, especially little girls, do any easy pleasant thing; and there’s another chair, like an office chair, with a leather cushion for the dear old man with a rosy face like a rosy apple, and a bald head on the top, and long white whiskers that he keeps so nice they shine like silver, and make you never mind when he wants to kiss you; and there’s a high mantel with a whole world of curious things on it that came out of a hundred years ago, and a lounge with a shaggy dog on a cushion on one end of it—how Aunt Rody lets him is a wonder to me—and a round table with piles of the ‘New York Observer’ on it. And just now the sweetest lady in the world in her wine-colored wrapper is lying on the lounge and the little girl in blue is flying about helping Aunt Affy and Aunt Rody get supper—O, mother,” with a break in her voice, “how I ache to get you there and take care of you there; Cousin Don says it is the best place in the world for you and me,—we would grow fresh and green and send out oxygen like all the green things in Bensalem. I think I’d like to grow green and send out oxygen.”
“Judith, you and I are always in the best place—for us.”
“Then,” said Judith, laughing, “I’d like a place not quite so good for us—only just as good as Bensalem.”