"Then you think real, honest Christians ought not to believe in dancing?"
"I didn't say any such thing," returned John hotly; then, being quick-witted, he realized his position, and despite his attempt not to, laughed. "I think we had better go after those curtains now," he said, significantly. And they went.
[CHAPTER XIII.]
BUDS OF PROMISE.
"WELL," said Dorothy, and she folded her arms and looked up and down the large room, a sense of great astonishment struggling with one of keen satisfaction on her face, "who ever thought that she could make this look like this!"
Which mixed and doubtful sentence indicates the bewilderment in Dorothy's mind. Yet there had been no wonderful thing done. But Dorothy belonged to that class of people who do not see what effects little changes might produce. Still, she belonged, let us be thankful, to that class of people who can see effects when the changes have been produced. There are not a few in this world who are as blind as bats about this latter matter.
The place in question was the large square front room of the Morgan family. The heavy crimson curtains, of rare pattern and graceful finish, hung in rich waves about the old-fashioned windows, falling to the very floor, and hiding many a defect in their ample folds. The walls were hung with pictures and brackets and text-cards. The brackets were furnished—one with a pretty antique vase, hiding within itself a small bottle of prepared earth, which nourished a thrifty ivy. One held a quaint old picture of Dorothy's mother's mother, for which Louise's deft fingers had that morning fashioned a frame of pressed leaves and ferns. The old-fashioned settee was drawn into exactly the right angle between the fire and the windows. The torn braid had been mended, and John, of his own will, had repaired the broken spring.
The heavy mahogany table rejoiced in a wealth of beautifully bound and most attractive-looking books; while a little stand, brought from Louise's own room, held a pot of budding and blossoming pinks, whose old-fashioned spicy breath pervaded the room. Perhaps no one little thing contributed to the holiday air which the room had taken on more than did the tidies of bright wools and clear white, over which Estelle had wondered when they were being packed, Louise thought of her and smiled, and wished she could have had a glimpse of them as they adorned the two rounding pillow-like ends of the sofa, hung in graceful folds from the small table that held the blossoming pinks, adorned the back and cushioned seat and arms of the wooden rocking-chair in the fireplace corner, and even lay smooth and white over the back of Father Morgan's old chair, which Louise had begged for the other chimney-corner, and which Mrs. Morgan, with a mixture of indifference and dimly-veiled pride, had allowed to be taken thither.
Little things were these, every one, yet what a transformation they made to Dorothy's eyes. The crowning beauty of the scene to Louise was the great old-fashioned artistic-looking pile of hickory logs which John built up scientifically in the chimney-corner, the blaze of which, when set on fire, glowed and sparked and danced, and burnished with a weird flame every picture and book, and played at light and shade among the heavy window drapery in a way that was absolutely bewitching to the eyes of the new-comer.
"What a delightful room this is!" she said, standing with clasped hands and radiant face, gazing with genuine satisfaction upon it when the fire was lighted. "How I wish my mother could see that fire! She likes wood fires so much, and she has had to depend on 'black holes in the floor' for so long a time. I do think I never was in a more home-like spot."