The maid stared dumbly at him, looked suspiciously at Mother. Apparently she decided that, though the flamboyant Father was likely to steal everything in the house, Mother was a person to be trusted, and she mumbled, “Yass, I gass so.”
Father led the way in, and Mother stumbled over every possible obstacle, so absorbed was she by the intimate pleasantness which furniture gave to this big living-room—as large as the whole of their flat in New York. Actually, the furniture wasn’t impressive—just a few good willow chairs, a big couch, a solid table. There were only two or three pictures, one rug, and, in the built-in shelves, no books at all. But it had space and cheerfulness; it was a home.
“Here’s the dining-room, with butler’s pantry, and that door on the right looks like it might be a bedroom,” Father announced, after a hasty exploration, while the maid stared doubtfully. He went on, half whispering, “Let’s peep into the bedroom.”
“No, no, we mustn’t do that,” Mother insisted, but regretfully. For she was already wondering where, if she were running things, she would put a sewing-machine. She had always agreed with Matilda Tubbs that sewing-machines belonged in bedrooms.
While the maid shadowed him and Mother opened her mouth to rebuke him, Father boldly pushed open the door on the right. He had guessed correctly. It was a bedroom. Mother haughtily stayed in the center of the living-room, but she couldn’t help glancing through the open door, and she sighed enviously as she saw the splendor of twin beds, with a little table and an electric light between them, and the open door of a tiled bathroom. It was too much that the mistress of the house should have left her canary-yellow silk sweater on the foot of one bed. Mother had wanted a silk sweater ever since she had beheld one flaunted on Cape Cod.
Father darted out, seized her wrists, dragged her into the bedroom, and while she was exploding in the lecture he so richly deserved she stopped, transfixed. Father was pointing to a picture over one bed, and smiling strangely.
The picture was an oldish one, in a blackened old frame. It showed a baby playing with kittens.
“Why!” gasped Mother—“why—why, it’s just like the picture—it is the picture—that we got when Lulu was born—that we had to leave on the Cape.”
“Yump,” said Father. He still smiled strangely. He pointed at the table between the twin beds. On the table was a little brown, dusty book. Mother gazed at it dazedly. Her step was feeble as she tottered between the beds, picked up the book, opened it. It was the New Testament which she had had since girlhood, which she had carried all through their hike, which she supposed to be in their rooms back at the Star Hotel.
There was a giggle from the doorway, and the apparently stupid maid was there, bowing.