"Is Mr. Richmond at home?" Matilda asked.
"Well, I s'pose he is. I hain't hearn him nor seen him go out since noon. Do ye want to see him, or is it a message?—ye want to see him, eh. Well, I s'pose he'll see you—if he ain't too busy—and I don't know when he gets time for all he has to do, but he gets it; so I s'pose I had ought to be satisfied. I don't, I know; but I s'pose men and women is different. Some folks would say that's a reason why men was created the first and the best; but I don't think so myself. And here I am an old goose, a-talkin' to little Tilly Englefield about philosophy, instead o' lettin' her into the minister's room. Well, come in, dear; round this way; the minister has taken a notion to keep that door shut up because of the cold."
Miss Redwood had not been idle during the utterance of this speech. First she had been shaking the snow from the door mat on which Matilda's feet had left it; then she seized a broom and brushed the white masses from the hall carpet out to the piazza, and even off the painted boards of that. Finally came in, shut the door, and led Matilda to the back of the hall, where it turned, and two doors, indeed three, confronted each other across a yard of intervening space. The housekeeper knocked at the one which led into the front room; then set it open for Matilda to go in, and closed it after her.
A pleasant room that was, though nothing in the world could be more unadorned. Deal shelves all around were filled with books; a table or two were piled with them; one, before the fire, was filled as well with papers and writing materials. This fronted, however, a real blazing fire, the very thing Miss Redwood had once been so uneasy about; in a wide open chimney-place, where two great old-fashioned brass andirons with round heads held a generous load of oak and hickory sticks, softly snapping and blazing. The sweet smell of the place struck Matilda's sense, almost before she saw the minister. It was a pure, quiet, scented atmosphere that the room held; where comfort and study seemed to lurk in the very folds of the chintz window-curtains, and to shine in the firelight, and certainly seemed to fill Mr. Richmond's arm-chair even when he was not in it. He rose out of it now to meet his little visitor, and laid study on the table. Of one sort.
"All's well at home, Tilly?" he asked, as he put her into his own chair.
"Yes, sir."
"And you do not come to me with any message but to see me yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"That's nice. Now while you are talking to me, I will roast you an apple."
Matilda looked on with great curiosity and as great a sense of relief, while Mr. Richmond took out of a cupboard a plate of apples, chose a fine one with a good bit of stem, tied a long pack-thread to this, and then hung the apple by a loop at the other end of the string, to a hook in the woodwork over the fireplace. The apple, suspended in front of the blazing fire, began a succession of swift revolutions; first in one direction and then in the other, as the string twisted or untwisted.