ked, seeing that he had put
down his bag.

"If you will let me. But I am afraid it will be inconvenient."

She shook her head. "Not if you don't mind the dust. The room has been
shut up for weeks, and the dust is so dreadful in the spring. The
servants have gone out," she added, "but I'll bring you some sheets for
your bed, and you can fill your pitcher from the spout at the end of the
hall. Only be careful not to stumble over the step there. It is hard to
see when the gas is not lit."

"You won't object to my putting shelves around the walls?" he asked,
while she pushed the mattress into place with the light and
condescending touch of one who preserves the aristocratic manner not
only in tragedy, but even in toil. It was, indeed, her peculiar
distinction, he came to know afterward, that she worked as gracefully as
other women played.

"Couldn't you find room enough without them?" she inquired while her
gaze left the mattress and travelled dubiously to the mantelpiece. "It
seems a pity for you to go to any expense about shelves, doesn't it?"

"Oh, they won't cost much. I'll do the work myself, and I'll do it in
the mornings when it won't disturb anybody. I daresay I'll have to push
that bed around a bit in order to make space."

Something in his vibrant voice--so full of the richness and the buoyant
energy of youth--made her look at him as she might have looked at one
of her children, or at that overgrown child whom she had married. And
just as she had managed Tom all his life by pretending to let him have
his way, so she proceeded now by instinct to manage Oliver. "You dear
boy! Of course you may turn things upside down if you want to. Only wait
a few days until you are settled and have seen how you like it."

Then she tripped out with her springy step, which had kept its
elasticity through war and famine, while Oliver, gazing after her,
wondered whether it was philosophy or merely a love of pleasure that
sustained her? Was it thought or the absence of thought that produced
her wonderful courage?

He heard her tread on the stairs; then the sound passed to the front
hall; and a minute later there floated up the laughter with which the
assembled boarders received her. Closing the door, which she had left
open, he turned back to the window and stared from his hilltop down on
the red roofs of Dinwiddie. White as milk, the moonlight lay on the
brick wall at the foot of the garden, and down the gradual hill rows of