"Who lives in this wing?" inquired Jenny.
"Aunt Rosa."
"Good gracious! A sort of mother-in-law?" cried her sister in consternation.
Gertrude shook her head. "No, she is quite inoffensive, she belongs to the inventory--so to speak. But I would like Frank to have his mother here, the old lady is so alone and she is not very well."
Jenny laughed aloud, but Mrs. Baumhagen rustled so angrily into the next room that all the ribbons on her rather youthful toilette fluttered and waved in the air.
"Gertrude!" cried Jenny, "you will not be so senseless!"
The young wife made no reply. She opened a wardrobe door in the corridor and said,
"This is the linen, Jenny; we need so much in the country. That is the chest for the finest linen and for the china, and this is my room. This way, mamma."
"It might have been a little less simple," remarked her mother, who had recovered herself, though the flush of excitement still rested on her full cheeks.
"I did not wish to be so very unlike Frank, who kept his old furniture; besides we are only in moderate circumstances, you know, mamma, and we are only just beginning."