"My books make it heavy," said Ida, in a dignified tone.
Cynthia opened the door leading from the kitchen into the hall, and showed the men up stairs to the neat but barely furnished room her sister was to occupy.
Ida followed, and, after the men had set the trunk down and gone away, she turned to Cynthia with an expression on her young face which was almost severe.
"Surely you don't allow that coarse common stage-driver to call you by your Christian name?" she said.
"Who? Old Jake Storm!" Cynthia looked surprised. "Why, Ida, of course he does! He has known me since I was two years old! He gave me a pair of pigeons once."
"Because he has known you all your life is no reason why he should be lacking in respect for you," rejoined Ida, still severe. "You are no longer a child."
"He doesn't intend it for disrespect, Ida."
"Perhaps not; but he should be made to know his place. Is this to be my room?"
"Yes, Aunt Patty and I thought you would like it better, perhaps, than the one we had together before you went away. We did what we could toward making it comfortable for you, and I do hope you'll like it."
She looked around the spacious chamber as she spoke. To her eyes it looked very attractive, with its bright rag carpet, light pine furniture, and fresh muslin curtains. There was a big crazy-work cushion in the old rocker; a home-made rug of scarlet and black lay before the bureau; and the blue glass vases on the high old-fashioned mantel were full of fragrant June roses. Over the bureau hung a sample of the needle-work for which Aunt Patty had been famous in her youth—a picture in colored silks of a house on a hill-side, a few trees around it, and several thick-waisted children in long pantalettes playing with an oddly shaped black dog.