The living room at Brookchase was early Victorian. Its threadbare, flowered carpet, high cornices, brass fender and firedogs, with long mirror over them, its harpbacked chairs, and Dickens at Gadshill, were free of more modern innovation than a brass lamp and the crashing contrast of a telephone.
By nine o’clock three of the precious logs crackled on the andirons, and grandma’s armchair was drawn before them. On various pretenses Martha peered in the door, like the prompter in the wings, at every few revolutions of the minute hand, and latterly found the house owner before the mirror, adjusting a stray lock of hair.
“That gray does become you, Miss Enid, if ’tis your grandma’s made down, you being so straight and slim. But you didn’t put her pin on. That weepin’ willer is a grand piece!”
This worshipful object was the cameo of a lachrymose female playing the harp over a mortuary urn. “Yet, I don’t know but them amber beads has more style!” added Martha. I assured her that unless Mr. Cary had changed beyond belief, he would be as impervious to beads as to sackcloth; and at the moment a motor horn sounded in the lane.
“He has come out early!” I cried, catching up a candle and lighting it, while Martha opened the outer door, like the warden of a castle, sending a beam of light straight into the eyes of a tall, slender man on the threshold.
“Cary! Cary Penwick!” I cried, drawing him into the firelight’s glow, where he stood, smiling a little behind a dark, Van Dyke beard, and blinking a little behind horn-rimmed glasses. Martha hovered with: “Are your feet dry, Mr. Cary? I’d best be bringin’ your grandma’s cordial!”
She hurried off, and I proffered the armchair.
“How good of you to leave the banquet early,” I said, conscious now that an intent, but veiled, gaze was studying me.
“I left it as the lesser attraction,” he said, in a reserved voice that gave me a sense of baffled surprise.
“Why, you do not in the least resemble your voice over the telephone!” I told him. “Telephones are so misleading.”