The Indifference of Juliet

With Illustrations

By HENRY HUTT

Horatio Marcy, an elderly New Englander of some wealth.

Anthony Robeson, the last young male representative of the Kentucky Robesons, now making his own way in Massachusetts.

Wayne Carey, Robeson’s former college chum, an office clerk on a salary.

Dr. Roger Williams Barnes, a surgeon.

Louis Lockwood, an attorney-at-law.

Stevens Cathcart, an architect.

Mrs. Dingley, sister of Horatio Marcy.

Juliet Marcy, daughter of Horatio Marcy.

Judith Dearborn, Juliet’s friend since school-days.

Suzanne Gerard, Marie Dresser, other friends of Juliet.

Rachel Redding, a poor country girl—of education.

Mary McKaim—in the background, but valuable.

“And you’ll be my friend just the same?” questioned Anthony anxiously. “My chum—my confidante?”

“Oh, well, Tony, that’s absurd,” declared Juliet Marcy severely. “As if she would allow it!”

“She’s three thousand miles away.”

“I’m ashamed of you!”

“Just in the interval, then,” pleaded Anthony. “I need you now worse than ever. For I’ve a tremendous responsibility on my hands. The—the—you know—is to come off in September, and this is June—and I’ve a house to furnish. Will you help me do it, Juliet?”

“Anthony Robeson!” she said explosively under her breath, with a laugh. Then she sat up and leaned forward with a commanding gesture. “Tell me all about it. What is her name and who is she? Where did you meet her? Are you very much——”

“Would I marry a girl if I were not ‘very much’?” demanded Anthony. “Well—I’ll tell you—since you insist on these non-essentials before you really come down to business. Her name is Eleanor Langham, and she lives in San Francisco. Her family is old, aristocratic, wealthy—yet she condescends to me.”

He looked up keenly into her eyes, and her brown lashes fell for an instant before something in his glance, but she said quickly: “Go on.”

“When the—affair—is over I want to bring my bride straight home,” Anthony proceeded, with a tinge of colour in his smooth, clear cheek. “I shall have no vacation to speak of at that time of year, and no time to spend in furnishing a house. Yet I want it all ready for her. So you see I need a friend. I shall have two weeks to spare in July, and if you would help me—”

“But, Tony,” she interrupted, “how could I? If—if we were seen shopping together——”

“No, we couldn’t go shopping together in New York without being liable to run into a wondering crowd of friends, of course—not in the places where you would want to go. But here you are only a couple of hours from Boston; you will be here all summer; you and Mrs. Dingley and I could run into Boston for a day at a time without anybody’s being the wiser. I know—that is—I’m confident Mrs. Dingley would do it for me——”

“Oh, of course. Did Auntie ever deny you anything since the days when she used to give you jam as often as you came across to play with me?”

“Never.”

“Have you her photograph?” inquired Miss Marcy with an emphasis which left no possible doubt as to whose photograph she meant.

“I expected that,” said Anthony gravely. “I expected it even sooner. But I am prepared.”

She sat watching him curiously as he slowly drew from his breast-pocket a tiny leather case, and gazed at it precisely as a lover might be expected to gaze at his lady’s image before jealously surrendering it into other hands. She had never seen Anthony Robeson look at any photograph except her own with just that expression. She had often wondered if he ever would. She had recommended this course of procedure to him many times, usually after once more gently refusing to marry him. She had begun at last to doubt whether it would ever be possible to divert Tony’s mind from its long-sought object. But that trip to San Francisco, and the months he had spent there in the interests of the firm he served, had evidently brought about the desired change. She had not seen him since his return until to-day, when he had run up into the country where was the Marcy summer home, to tell her, as she now understood, his news and to make his somewhat extraordinary request.

She accepted the photograph with a smile, and studied it with attention.

“Oh, but isn’t she pretty?” she cried warmly—and generously, for she was thinking as she looked how much prettier was Miss Langham than Miss Marcy.

“Isn’t she?” agreed Anthony with enthusiasm.

“Lovely. What eyes! And what a dear mouth!”

“You’re right.”

“She looks clever, too.”

“She is.”

“How tall is she?”

“About up to my shoulder.”

“She’s little, then.”

“Well, I don’t know,” objected Anthony, surveying his own stalwart length of limb. “A girl doesn’t have to be a dwarf not to be on a level with me. I should say she must be somewhere near your height.”

“What a magnificent dresser!”

“Is she? She never irritates one with the fact.”

“Oh, but I can see. And she’s going to marry you. Tony, what can you give her?”

“A little box of a house, one maidservant, an occasional trip into town, four new frocks a year—moderate ones, you know, in keeping with her circumstances—and my name,” replied Anthony composedly.

“You won’t let her live in town, then?”

“Let her! Good heavens, what sort of a place could I give her in town on my salary? Now, in the very rural suburb I’ve picked out she can live in the greatest comfort, and we can have a real home—something I haven’t had since Dad died and the old home and the money and all the rest of it went.”

His face was grave now, and he was staring down into the water as if he saw there both what he had lost and what he hoped to gain.

“Yes,” said Juliet sympathetically, though she did not know how to imagine the girl whose photograph she held in the surroundings Anthony suggested. Presently she went on in her gentlest tone: “I’m not saying that the name isn’t a proud one to offer her, Tony—and if she is willing to share your altered fortunes I’ve no doubt she will be happy. Along with your name you’ll give her a heart worth having.”

“Thank you,” said Anthony without looking up.

Miss Marcy coloured slightly, and hastened to supplement this speech with another.

“The question is—since the home is to be hers—why not let her furnish it? Her tastes and mine might not agree. Besides——”

“Well——”

“Why—you know, Tony,” explained Juliet in some confusion, “I shouldn’t know how to be economical.”

“I’m aware that you haven’t been brought up on the most economical basis,” Anthony acknowledged frankly. “But I’ll take care of my funds, no matter how extravagant you are inclined to be. If I should hand you five dollars and say, ‘Buy a dining-table,’ you could do it, couldn’t you? You couldn’t satisfy your ideals, of course, but you could give me the benefit of your discriminating choice within the five-dollar limit.”

Juliet laughed, but in her eyes there grew nevertheless a look of doubt. “Tony,” she demanded, “how much have you to spend on the furnishing of that house?”

“Just five hundred dollars,” said Anthony concisely. “And that must cover the repairing and painting of the outside. Really, Juliet, haven’t I done fairly well to save up that and the cost of the house and lot—for a fellow who till five years ago never did a thing for himself and never expected to need to? Yes, I know—the piano in your music-room cost twice that, and so did the horses you drive, and a very few of your pretty gowns would swallow another five. But Mrs. Anthony Robeson will have to chasten her ideas a trifle. Do you know, Juliet—I think she will—for love of me?”

He was smiling at his own audacious confidence. Juliet attempted no reply to this very unanswerable statement. She studied the photograph in silence, and he lay watching her. In her blue-and-white boating suit she was a pleasant object to look at.

“Will you help me?” he asked again at length. “I’m more anxious than I can tell you to have everything ready.”

“I shouldn’t like to fail you, Tony, since you really wish it, though I’m very sure you’ll find me a poor adviser. But you haven’t been a brother to me since the mud-pie days for nothing, and if I can help you with suggestions as to colour and style I’ll be glad to. Though I shall all the while be trying to live up to this photograph, and that will be a little hard on the five-dollar-dining-table scale.”

“You’ve only to look out that everything is in good taste,” said Anthony quietly, “and that you can’t help doing. My wife will thank you, and the new home will be sweet to her because of you. It surely will to me.”

It was on the first day of Robeson’s two-weeks’ July vacation that he came to take Juliet Marcy and her aunt, Mrs. Dingley, who had long stood to her in the place of the mother she had early lost, to see the home he had bought in a remote suburb of a great city. It was a three-hours’ journey from the Marcy country place, but he had insisted that Juliet could not furnish the house intelligently until she had studied it in detail.

So at eleven o’clock of a hot July morning Miss Marcy found herself surveying from the roadway a small, old-fashioned white house, with green blinds shading its odd, small-paned windows; a very “box of a house,” as Anthony had said, set well back from the quiet street and surrounded by untrimmed trees and overgrown shrubbery. The whole place had a neglected appearance. Even the luxuriant climbing-rose, which did its best to hide the worn white paint of the house-front, served to intensify the look of decay.

“Charming, isn’t it?” asked Robeson with the air of the delighted proprietor. “Of course everything looks gone to seed, but paint and a lawn-mower and a few other things will make another place of it. It’s good old colonial, that’s sure, and only needs a bit of fixing up to be quite correct, architecturally, small as it is.”

He led the way up the weedy path, Mrs. Dingley and Juliet exchanging amused glances behind his back. He opened the doors with a flourish and waved the ladies in. They entered with close-held skirts and noses involuntarily sniffing at the musty air. Anthony ran around opening windows and explaining the “points” of the house. When they had been over it Mrs. Dingley, warm and weary, subsided upon the door-step, while Juliet and Anthony fell to discussing the possibilities of the place.

“You see,” said Anthony, mopping his heated brow, “it isn’t like having big, high rooms to decorate. These little rooms,”—he put up his hand and succeeded, from his fine height, in touching the ceiling of the lower front room in which they stood—“won’t stand anything but the most simple treatment, and expensive papers and upholsteries would be out of place. It will take only very small rugs to suit the floors. The main thing for you to think of will be colours and effects. You’ll find five hundred dollars will go a long way, even after the repairs and outside painting are disposed of.”

He looked so appealing that Juliet could but answer heartily: “Yes, I’m sure of it. And now, Tony, don’t you think you’d better draw a plan of the house, putting in all the measurements, so we shall know just how to go to work? And I will go around and dream a while in each room. Give me the photograph, you devoted lover, so I can plan things to suit her.”

Anthony laughed and put his hand into his breast-pocket. But he drew it out empty.

“Why—I’ve left it behind,” he admitted in some embarrassment. “I really thought I had it.”

“Oh, Tony! And on this very trip when we needed it most! How could you leave it behind? Don’t you always carry it next your heart?”

“Is that the prescribed place?”

“Certainly. I should doubt a man’s love if he did not constantly wear my likeness right where it could feel his heart beating for me.”

“Now I never supposed,” remarked Anthony, considering her attentively, “that you had so much romance about you. Do you realise that for an extremely practical young person such as you have—mostly—appeared to be, that is a particularly sentimental suggestion? Er—should you wear his in the same way, may I inquire?”

“Of course,” returned Juliet with defiance in her eyes, whose lashes, when they fell at length before his steadily interested gaze, swept a daintily colouring cheek.

“Have you ever worn one?” inquired this hardy young man, nothing daunted by these signs of righteous indignation. But all he got for answer was a vigorous:

“You absurd boy! Now go to work at your measurements. I’m going upstairs. There’s one room up there, the one with the gable corners and the little bits of windows, that’s perfectly fascinating. It must be done in Delft blue and white. Since I haven’t the photograph”—she turned on the threshold to smile roguishly back at him—“memory must serve. Beautiful dark hair; eyes like a Madonna’s; a perfect nose; the dearest mouth in the world—oh, yes——”

She vanished around the corner only to put her head in again with the air of one who fires a parting shot at a discomfited enemy: “But, Tony—do you honestly think the house is large enough for such a queen of a woman? Won’t her throne take up the whole of the first floor?”

Then she was gone up the diminutive staircase, and her light footsteps could be heard on the bare floors overhead. Left alone, Anthony Robeson stood still for a moment looking fixedly at the door by which she had gone. The smile with which he had answered her gay fling had faded; his eyes had grown dark with a singular fire; his hands were clenched. Suddenly he strode across the floor and stopped by the door. He was looking down at the quaint old latch which served instead of a knob. Then, with a glance at the unconscious back of Mrs. Dingley, sitting sleepily on the little porch outside, he stooped and pressed his lips upon the iron where Juliet’s hand had lain.

“Five hundred dollars,” mused Miss Marcy, on the Boston train next morning. “Six rooms—living-room, dining-room, kitchen, and three bedrooms. That’s——”

“You forget,” warned Anthony Robeson from the seat where he faced Juliet and Mrs. Dingley. “That must cover the outside painting and repairs. You can’t figure on having more than three hundred dollars left for the inside.”

“Dear me, yes,” frowned Juliet. She held Anthony’s plan in her hand, and her tablets and pencil lay in her lap. “Well, I can spend fifty dollars on each room—only some will need more than others. The living-room will take the most—no, the dining-room.”

“The kitchen will take the most,” suggested Mrs. Dingley. “Your range will use up the most of your fifty. And kitchen utensils count up very rapidly.”

“It will be a very small range,” Anthony said. “A little toy stove would be more practical for our—the kitchen. How big is it, Juliet?”

“‘Ten by fourteen,’” read Juliet. “From the centre of the room you can hit all the side walls with the broom. Speaking of walls, Tony—those must be our first consideration. If we get our colour scheme right everything else will follow. I have it all in my head.”

So it proved. But it also proved, when they had been hard at work for an hour at a well-known decorator’s, that the tints and designs for which Miss Marcy asked were not readily to be found in the low-priced wall-papers to which Anthony rigidly held her.

“I must have the softest, most restful greens for the living-room,” she announced. “There—that——”

“But that is a dollar a roll,” whispered Anthony.

“Then—that!”

“Eighty-five cents.”

“But for that little room, Tony——”

“Twenty-five cents a roll is all we can allow,” insisted Anthony firmly. “And less than that everywhere else.”

The salesman was very obliging, and showed the best things possible for the money. It was impossible to resist the appeal in the eyes of this critical but restricted young buyer.

“There, that will do, I think,” said Juliet at length, with a long breath. “The green for the living-room and for the bit of a hall—No, no, Tony; I’ve just thought! You must take away that little partition and let the stairs go up out of the living-room. That will improve the apparent size of things wonderfully.”

“All right,” agreed Anthony obediently.

“Then we’ll put that rich red in the dining-room. For upstairs there is the tiny rose pattern, and the Delft blue, and that little pale yellow and white stripe. In the kitchen we’ll have the tile pattern. We won’t have a border anywhere—the rooms are too low; just those simplest mouldings, and the ivory white on the ceilings. The woodwork must all be white. There now, that’s settled. Next come the floors.”

There could be no doubt that Juliet was becoming interested in her task. Though the July heat was intense she led the way with rapid steps to the place where she meant to select her rugs. Here the three spent a trying two hours. It was hard to please Miss Marcy with Japanese jute rugs, satisfactory in colouring though many of them were, when she longed to buy Persian pieces of distinction. If Juliet had a special weakness it was for choice antique rugs.

She cornered Anthony at last, while Mrs. Dingley and the salesman were politely but unequivocally disputing over the quality of a certain piece of Chinese weaving.

“Tony,” she begged, “please let me get that one dear Turkish square for the living-room. It will give character to the whole room, and the colours are perfectly exquisite. I simply can’t get one of those cheap things to go in front of that beautiful old fireplace. Imagine the firelight on that square; it would make you want to spend your evenings at home. Please!”

“Do you imagine that I shall ever want to spend them anywhere else?” asked Tony softly, looking down into her appealing face. “Why, chum, I’d like to get that Tabriz you admire so much, if it would please you, in spite of the fact that we should have to pull the whole house up forty notches to match it. But even the Turkish square is out of the question.”

“But, Tony”—Juliet was whispering now with her head a little bent and her eyes on the lapel of his coat—“won’t you let me do it as my—my contribution? I’d like to put something of my own into your house.”

“You dear little girl,” Anthony answered—and possibly for her own peace of mind it was fortunate that Miss Langham, of California, could not see the look with which he regarded Miss Marcy, of Massachusetts—“I’m sure you would. And you are putting into it just what is priceless to me—your individuality and your perfect taste. But I can’t let even you help furnish that house. She—must take what I—and only I—can give her.”

“You’re perfectly ridiculous,” murmured Juliet, turning away with an expression of deep displeasure. “As if she wouldn’t bring all sorts of elegant stuff with her, and make your cheap things look insignificant.”

“I don’t think she will,” returned Anthony with conviction. “She’ll bring nothing out of keeping with the house.”

“I thought you told me she was of a wealthy family.”

“She is. But if she marries me she leaves all that behind. I’ll have no wife on any other basis.”

“Well—for a son of the Robesons of Kentucky you are absolutely the most absurd boy anybody ever heard of,” declared the girl hotly under her breath. Then she walked over and ordered a certain inexpensive rug for the living-room with the air of a princess and the cheeks of a poppy.

It may have been that Miss Marcy was piqued into trying to see how little she could spend, but certain it was that from the time she left the carpet shop she begged for no exceptions to Mr. Robeson’s rule of strict economy. She selected simple, delicate muslins for the windows, one and all, without a glance at finer draperies; bought denims and printed stuffs as if she had never heard of costlier upholsteries; and turned away from seductive pieces of Turkish and Indian embroideries offered for her inspection with a demure, “No, I don’t care to look at those now,” which more than once brought a covert smile to Anthony’s lips and a twinkle to the eyes of the salesman. It was so very evident that the fair buyer did not pass them by for lack of interest.

Altogether, it was an interesting week these three people spent—for a week it took. Anthony began to protest after the first two days, and said he could not ask so much of his friends. But Juliet would not be hindered from taking infinite pains, and Mrs. Dingley good humouredly lent the two her chaperonage and her occasional counsel, such as only the gray-haired matron of long housewifely experience can furnish.

The selection of the furniture took perhaps the most time, and was the hardest, because of the difficulty of finding good styles in keeping with the limited purse. Anthony possessed a number of good pieces of antique character, but beyond these everything was to be purchased. Juliet turned in despair from one shop after another, and when it came to the fitting of the dining-room she grew distinctly indignant.

“It’s a perfect shame,” she said, “that they can’t offer really good designs in the cheap things. Did you ever see anything so hideous? Tony, if I were you I’d rather eat my breakfast off one of those white kitchen tables—or——”

She broke off suddenly, rushed away down the long room to a group of chastely elegant dining-room furniture and came back after a little with a face of great eagerness to drag her companions away with her. She took them to survey a set of the costliest of all.

“Have you gone crazy?” Anthony inquired.

“Not at all. Tony, just study that table. It’s massive, but it’s simple—simple as beauty always is. Look at those perfectly straight legs—what clever cabinet maker couldn’t copy that in—in ash, Tony? Then there are stains—I’ve heard of them—that rub into wood and then finish in some way so it’s smooth and satiny. You could do that—I’m sure you could. Then you’d get the lovely big top you want. And the chairs—do you see the plain, solid-looking things? I know they could be made this way. Then the dining-room would be simply dear!”

“Juliet, you’re coming on,” declared Anthony with satisfaction that evening as the two, back at the Marcy country place, strolled slowly over the lawn toward the river edge. “At this rate you’ll do for a poor man’s wife yourself some day. That frock you have on now—isn’t that a sort of concession to the humble company you’re in?”

“In what way?” Juliet glanced down at the pale-green gown whose delicate skirts she was daintily lifting, and in which she looked like a flower in its calyx. She had rejoiced to exchange the dusty dress in which she had come home from town for this, which suggested coolness in each fresh fold.

“Why, it strikes me as about the simplest dress I ever saw you wear. Isn’t it really—well—the least expensive thing you have had in that line in some time?”

The amused laugh with which this observation was greeted might have been disconcerting to anybody but Anthony Robeson, but he maintained his ground with calmness.

“How many of these do you think you can furnish Mrs. Anthony with in a year?” Juliet inquired, her lips forcing themselves to soberness, but the laughter lingering in her eyes.

“Several, as girlishly demure as that, I fancy,” asserted the young man with confidence.

But Juliet’s momentary gravity broke down. “Oh, you clever boy!” she said. “I shall advise Mrs. Anthony to send you shopping for her when she needs a new frock. You will order home just what she wants without stopping to ask the price, you will be so confident that you know a cheap thing when you see it. Afterward you will pay the bill—and then the awful frown on your brow! You will have to live on bread and milk for a month to get your accounts straightened out. Oh, Tony!—No, I shouldn’t do for a poor man’s wife—not judging by this ‘girlishly demure’ gown, you poor lamb.—But, Tony,” with a swift change of manner, “I do think the little house will be very charming indeed. I can hardly wait to know that the painting and papering are done, so that we can go down and get things in order. I long to arrange those fascinating new tin things in that bit of a cupboard. Tony”—turning to him solemnly—“does she know how to cook?”

“I think she is learning now,” he assured her. “Seems to me she mentioned it in to-day’s——” He fumbled in his breast-pocket and brought out a letter.

Juliet stole an interested glance at it. She observed that there were three closely written sheets of the heavy linen paper, and that the handwriting was one suggestive of a pleasing individuality. Anthony, in the dim twilight, was scanning page after page in a lover’s absorbed way. Juliet walked along by his side in silence. She was thinking of the face in the photograph, and wondering if Miss Eleanor Langham really loved Anthony Robeson as he deserved to be loved.

“For he is a dear, dear fellow,” she said to herself, “and if she could just see him planning so enthusiastically for her comfort, even if he does have to economise, she’d——”

“No, it’s not in this letter,” observed Anthony, putting the sheets together with a lingering touch which did not escape his companion’s quick eyes. “It must have been in yesterday’s.”

“Does she write every day?”

“Did you ever hear of an engaged pair who didn’t write every day?”

“It must take a good deal of your time,” she remarked. “But, of course, she can cook. Every sane girl takes a cooking-school course nowadays. It’s as essential as French.”

“You did, then?”

“Of course. Don’t you remember when I used to edify you with new and wonderful dishes every time you dropped in to luncheon?”

“But did you learn the more important things?”

“I paid especial attention to soups, sir,” laughed Juliet. “Now, if Mrs. Anthony has done that you can live very economically.”

“I’ll suggest it to her,” said Anthony gravely.

It took several trips to the small house, and a great deal of hemming and ruffling of muslin on the part of Juliet and the Marcy sewing-woman, to say nothing of many days of Anthony’s hard labour, to get everything in place. But it was all done at length, and the hour arrived to close the new home and leave it to wait the oncoming day in September when it should be permanently opened.

“I’ll just go over it once more,” said Juliet to Mrs. Dingley. The latter lady was lying in a hammock out under the apple trees, waiting for train time and her final release from duties which were becoming decidedly wearisome. It was the first day of August, and the evening was a warm one. Anthony had gone off upon a last errand of some sort. Mrs. Dingley was too exhausted to offer to accompany her niece, and Juliet ran back into the house alone. She wandered slowly through the rooms, looking about to see if there might be any perfecting touch which she could add.

It was a charming place; even a daughter of the house of Marcy could but own to that. Under her skilful management the little rooms had blossomed into a fresh, satisfying beauty that needed only the addition of the personal adornment which Anthony’s bride would be sure to bring, to become a home—the home not only of a poor man but of a refined and cultured one as well. Restricted though she had been to the most inexpensive means of bringing about this happy result, Juliet had made them all tell toward an effect of great harmony and beauty. Perhaps to nobody was this more of a revelation than to the girl herself.

She was very proud of the living-room, as she looked about it. The partition between it and the tiny hall had been removed, according to her suggestion, and the straight staircase altered by means of a landing and an abrupt turn which transformed it into picturesqueness. With its low, broad steps, its slender spindles and odd posts, it added much to the character of the room.

Like most old New England houses, this one’s chief glory was its great central chimney, with big fireplaces opening both into the living-room and the dining-room. In the former, between the fireplace and the staircase, and forming a suggestion of an inglenook, Juliet had contrived a high, wide seat, cushioned in dull green, and boasting a number of pretty pillows. It must be confessed that she had surreptitiously added a little to these in the matter of certain modestly rich bits of material, and she contemplated the result with great satisfaction. It may be remarked, with no comment whatever, that in spite of their beauty there was not a pillow of all those scattered about the house which a weary man might not tuck under his head without fear of ruining a creation too delicate for any use but to be admired.

Having seized upon the idea of staining cheap material, she had carried it out in a set of low bookcases across the end and one side of the room. These awaited the coming of the several hundreds of choice books which Anthony had saved from his father’s library. Two fine old portraits, dear to the hearts of many generations of the “Robesons of Kentucky,” lent distinction to the home of their young descendant. Altogether the room was both quaint and artistic, and with its few plain chairs and tables, mostly heirlooms, and all of good old colonial design, was a room in which one could readily imagine one’s self sitting down to a winter evening of cosy comfort, such as is not always to be had in far finer abiding-places.

The dining-room was a study in its reds and browns, and its home-made furniture was an astonishing success—if one were not too severely critical. As she surveyed it Juliet seemed to see the future master and mistress of this little home sitting down opposite each other in the fireglow, and smiling across.

The coming Mrs. Robeson, if one might judge by her photograph, was a woman to lend grace and dignity to her surroundings, whatever they might be. Juliet could imagine her pretty, stately way of presiding at such small feasts as the room was destined to see, making her guests quite forget that she was not mistress of a mansion equal to any in the land. Would she be happy? Could she be happy here, after all that she had had of another and very different sort of life? For some reason, as Juliet stood and looked and thought, her face grew very sober, and a long-drawn breath escaped her lips.

The little kitchen was an exceedingly alluring place, gay in the bravery of fresh paint and spotless, shining utensils. There were even crisp curtains—at eight cents a yard—tied back at the high, wide-silled, triple window with its diminutive panes. It needed only a pot or two of growing plants in the window, and a neat-handed Phyllis in a figured gown, to be the old-time kitchen of one’s dreams.

But it was upon the rooms on the upper floor that Juliet had exhausted her imagination and effort. Nothing could have been conceived of more dainty than they. Here her denims and muslins had run riot. Low dressing-tables clad in ruffled hangings, their padded tops delicate with the breath of orris; beds valanced with similar stuffs; high-backed chairs, their seats cushioned into comfort—everything was done in the cleverest imitation of the ancient styles in keeping with the old-fashioned house. It all made one think of the patter of high-heeled, buckled slippers, and stiff, rustling, brocaded gowns, and powdered hair, and the odours of long ago. Anthony would never know what his friendly home-maker had put into these rooms of sentiment and charm.