But the crowning glory of the supper was a dish of scarlet strawberries, which looked as if they had been drinking dew-drops and sunshine till they had caught all the richness and sweetness of summer.
"O, ma!" whispered Grace, "I'm beginning to feel so happy! I only wish my father was here."
After tea, grandpa took Horace and Grace on each knee, large as they were, and sang some delightful evening hymns with what was left of his once fine voice. He looked so peaceful and happy, that his daughters were reminded of the Bible verse, "Children's children are the crown of old men."
"I think now," said Mrs. Clifford, coming back from putting the baby to sleep, "it's high time my boy and girl were saying, 'Good-night, and pleasant dreams.'"
"Aunt Madge is going up stairs with us; aren't you, auntie?"
"Yes, Horace; your other auntie wouldn't do, I suppose," said Louise. "That makes me think of the way this same Horace used to treat me when he was two years old. 'Her can't put me to bed,' he would say; 'her's too little.'"
"I remember," said Margaret, "how he dreaded cold water. When his mother called him to be washed, and said, 'Ma doesn't want a little dirty boy,' he would look up in her face, and say, 'Does mamma want 'ittle cold boy?'"
The happy children kissed everybody good-night, and followed their aunt Madge up stairs. Now, there was a certain small room, whose one window opened upon the piazza, and it was called "the green chamber." It contained a cunning little bedstead, a wee bureau, a dressing-table, and washing-stand, all pea-green. It was a room which seemed to have been made and furnished on purpose for a child, and it had been promised to Grace in every letter aunt Madge had written to her for a year.
Horace had thought but little about the room till to-night, when his aunt led Grace into it, and he followed. It seemed so fresh and sweet in "the green chamber," and on the dressing-table there was a vase of flowers.
Aunt Madge bade the children look out of the window at a bird's nest, which was snuggled into one corner of the piazza-roof, so high up that nobody could reach it without a very tall ladder.