ning-rods," he concluded quaintly.

* * * * *

As soon as they had reached the house, Charlotte took Sophy upstairs to
show her the nursery she had arranged for Bobby, and the old nursery
just across the hall, that she and Sophy used to share together, and
which was now to be her sister's bedroom. Even then Charlotte had
ventured to suggest timidly:

"Won't you change to something cooler, dear?"

She longed to see Sophy in white blouse and duck skirt as in old days.
She opened a closet door, suggestively. "There are some of your summer
things hanging here just as they used to. Mammy Nan did them up for you
herself."

Sophy stood with her arm about Charlotte's waist, looking at the freshly
laundered, white skirts that she had worn as a girl. They seemed like
ghosts to her, gleaming there in the dim closet--phantoms of her dead
self--of that joyous, exultant, "cock-sure" girl that had been herself
and could never come to life again. A new sadness came over her like the
sadness with which we look on the garments of the dead.

"No--I don't think I'll change, Chartie," she said gently. "This gown I
have on is really cool."

And she picked up a fold of her thin, crepe skirt that Charlotte might
see for herself. She did not realise that it was the blackness of her
dress that Charlotte wanted changed. She was so used to wearing black
now that she felt more at ease in it. It had become a sort of uniform.
She was one of the army of sorrow. To wear its prescribed black made her
feel less conspicuous. The repellent custom of "mourning" has this
illogical consolation for its adherents.

But her sadness faded as she looked round the familiar room. The very
smell of it was the same. A scent of India matting and beeswax, and the
Russia leather of her sets of Shakespeare and Chaucer. She went from
object to object, touching them lovingly. Colour had come to her face.
Her grey eyes shone dark. She stood at the foot of the green bed with
its painted birds-of-Paradise, now but faint blurs of gold and crimson,
looking lovingly at its fluted pillow-slips and coverlet of old, white
"honey-comb."

"What happy dreams we've dreamed there, Chartie!" she murmured. "We were
such happy things."

Charlotte called from the window for Mammy Nan to bring the youngest of
her three sons to see "Miss Sophy." This was William Taliaferro, usually
called "Winks," Bobby's senior by three months. Jack and Joey were sti