At the house there remained for the guests an hour before the fire, where
Juliet brought in something hot and sweet and sour and spicy, which tasted
delicious and brought her a shower of compliments while they drank a
friendly draught to her. When she had left them, standing in an admiring
group on the hearth-rug and wishing her happy dreams, they settled into
luxurious positions of ease before the fire--a fire in the last stages of
red comfort before it dies into a smoulder of torrid ashes.
"Anthony Robeson," said Wayne Carey, regarding the andirons fixedly over
his bed-time pipe, "you're a happy man."
Anthony laughed contentedly. He had thrown himself down upon the
hearth-rug with his head on a pillow pulled from the settle, and lay flat
on his back with his hands clasped behind his neck. It was an attitude
deeply expressive of masculine comfort.
"You're exactly right," said he. "And you would be the same if you would
give up living in that infernal boarding-house. What do you want to fool
with your first year of married life like that for? You told me that
Judith was bowled over by our wedding, and was ready to go in for this
sort of thing with a will."
"I know it," admitted Carey, "but"--he spoke hesitatingly--"we couldn't
seem to find this sort of thing. You had corralled all there was."
"Nonsense."
"You had. Everything we looked at was so old and mouldy, or so new and
inartistic, or so high-priced, or so far away--well, we couldn't seem to
get at it, so we said we'd board a while and wait until we could look
around."
"How does it work?"
"Why, I suppose it works very well," said Carey cautiously. "Judith seems
contented. We have as good meals as the average in such houses, and the
people are rather a nice lot. We're invited around quite a good deal, and
Judith likes that. I ought to like it better than I do, somehow. I'm so
confoundedly tired when I get home nights I can't help thinking of you and
Juliet here in this jolly room. There's an abominable blue and yellow
wall-paper on our sitting-room--and it has a way of appearing to turn
seasick in the evening under the electrics. Sometimes I think it's that
that makes me feel----"
"Seasick, too?" inquired the doctor with his professional air. He was
standing with his arm on the chimney-piece, looking alternately down on
his friends and around the long, low room. It _was_ a jolly room--the very
essence of comfort and cosiness. It was a beautiful room, too, in a simple
way; one which satisfied his sense of harmony in colours and fabrics--a
keen sense with him, as it is apt to be with men of his profession.
"Judith likes this, too, you know," Carey went on loyally. "She thinks
it's great. But how to get it for ourselves--that's another matter.
Somehow, you were lucky."
"Did you ever happen to see," asked Anthony, "a photograph I took, just
for fun, of this house as it was when Juliet saw it first? No? Well, just
look in that box on the end of the farther bookcase, will you? It's near
the top--there--that's it."
He lay looking up through half-closed lashes at the two men as they
studied the photograph, the doctor leaning over Carey's shoulder.
"On your word, man, did it look like that?" cried Barnes.
"Just like that."
"Yes, I've heard it did," admitted Carey; "but I never quite believed it
could have been as bad as that."
"Who planned it all?" the doctor asked, getting possession of the
photograph as Carey laid it down, and giving it careful scrutiny.
"My little home-maker."
"Jove--are there any more like her?"
"They're pretty rare, I understand. Juliet has one in training--one with a
good deal of native capacity, I should judge."
"Let me know when her graduation day approaches," remarked the doctor.
* * * * *
When he fell asleep that night in the dainty guest-room Barnes was
wondering whether Mrs. Robeson got her own breakfasts, and hoping that she
certainly did not, at least when guests were in the house. He was down
half an hour earlier than necessary, and to his great satisfaction found a
slender figure brushing up ashes and setting the fireplace in order for
the morning fire. As he begged leave to help he noted the satin smoothness
of Miss Redding's heavy black hair and the trim perfection of her attire.
She reminded him of his hospital nurses in their immaculate blue and
white. When he saw the mistress of the house and found her similarly
dressed a certain skepticism grew in his mind.
When he went out to breakfast he murmured in Anthony's ear: "Just tell me,
old fellow--to satisfy the curiosity of a bachelor--do these girls of your
household always look like this in the early morning? I know it's
mean--but you will know how to evade me if I'm too impertinent----"
Anthony glanced from Juliet, resembling a pink carnation in her wash
frock--February though it was--to Rachel Redding in dark blue and white,
and smiled mischievously. "Mrs. Robeson--and Miss Redding--you are
challenged," he announced. "Here's a fine old chump who has an awful
suspicion that maybe when there are no guests you come down in calico
wrappers with day-before-yesterday's aprons on."
Juliet gave the doctor a glance which made him pretend to shrink behind
Carey for protection. "Will you please answer him, Tony?" she said.
"On my word and honour, Roger Barnes, then," said Anthony proudly, "they
always look like this."
When the doctor left he was weighing carefully in his mind an urgent
problem: After waiting six months before making his first visit at the
Robesons, how soon could he decently come again?