"Father has gone down-town," she told him, as he took off his things. "Mr. Spearman returns from Duluth this morning, and father wished to tell him about you as soon as possible. I told father you had come to see him last night; and he said to bring you down to the office."
"I overslept, I'm afraid," Alan said.
"You slept well, then?"
"Very well—after a while."
"I'll take you down-town myself after breakfast."
She said no more but led him into the breakfast room. It was a delightful, cozy little room, Dutch furnished, with a single wide window to the east, an enormous hooded fireplace taking up half the north wall, and blue Delft tiles set above it and paneled in the walls all about the room. There were the quaint blue windmills, the fishing boats, the baggy-breeked, wooden-shod folk, the canals and barges, the dikes and their guardians, and the fishing ship on the Zuyder Zee.
Alan gazed about at these with quick, appreciative interest. His quality of instantly noticing and appreciating anything unusual was, Constance thought, one of his pleasantest and best characteristics.
"I like those too; I selected them myself in Holland," she observed.
She took her place beside the coffee pot, and when he remained standing—"Mother always has her breakfast in bed; that's your place," she said.
He took the chair opposite her. There was fruit upon the table; Constance took an orange and passed the little silver basket across.