into it with all the energy which she had meant for her new responsibilities at the mill, and for being in love with Luke, and she rose at five and stayed up until midnight many nights, and flew up the hill at noon for a precious half hour. Slowly, very slowly, the old house crawled out of its skin of ugliness and became simple and charming. The two women worked tirelessly; Miss Ada hurried home from school to sew on curtains and covers and valances, and Glen performed the more robust tasks of painting and polishing, of hammering and tacking.

The oppressive wall papers were covered over with a cool gray with a faint glint of gold in it, downstairs,[118] and with prim little patterns of blue and purple rosebuds and humming birds and weeping-willow trees upstairs; the fat magenta and mustard colored flowers in the carpets went away forever to bloom in Phemie’s delighted cabin, and the floors, discovered to be surprisingly smooth and well laid, took their coats of serene hues successfully; the windows looked at once demure and arch between their dotted-muslin ruffles. The golden oak, sold to Phemie’s friends and neighbors, brought enough to replace it with a few satisfying old walnut and cherry things. There were no museum pieces, but they were honest in line and color, and with fresh upholstering in flowered chintz and hours of polishing took on an air of stable worth. These, together with Miss Ada’s beautiful old sofa carved in great bunches of grapes, her own dear father’s armchair, which she now brought down from her chamber, a gate-legged table and a prim rocker and a stern old bookcase and writing desk in one, furnished the house sparingly, almost austerely, but very restfully.

[118]

“And now and then, as we feel we can afford it, we will add things,” Miss Ada said.

Janice Jennings, who had taken her grandmother to Florida and brought her back again for a final fortnight at the Bella Vista, stared at it in gasping astonishment. Her bright mouth fell open as always in moments of mystification. “It knocks me for[119] a goal!” she admitted freely. “It was the well-known world’s most horrible interior, and now it’s a darb! I’ve got to hand it to you, girls!” She beamed on Glen and Miss Ada in turn, and her bright little eyes roved consideringly over the cool and quiet interior. “Now, you need an honest-to-God old clock in the middle of the mantelpiece, and a Dresden China shepherd and his sweetie saying—‘Oh, you kid!’ from each end, and you’ll be all set, and I’ve seen the very things in that old cellar shop on Main Street.”

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