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Page 6
His arms came about her from behind, his head against hers gently forced
it back to face the mirror. In it the two pairs of eyes met again, hazel
and black.
"To think that I should see _that_ reflected from my old glass!"
whispered Red Pepper Burns.
CHAPTER II
THE WAY TO ATTAIN AN END
Mrs. Redfield Pepper Burns stood in the doorway of her living-room and
studied it with a critical eye. Within the room, on either side, stood
her sister Martha, Mrs. James Macauley, and her friend Winifred, Mrs.
Arthur Chester. In precisely these same relative positions were they
also her neighbours as to their own homes. Their husbands were Red
Pepper's best friends, outside those of his own profession. It was
appropriate that they should have stood by her during the period of
fitting and furnishing that part of the old house which her husband had
termed her "quarters."
"It's the loveliest room in this town," declared Winifred Chester, "and
I'm going to have all I can do not to be envious."
"I doubt if very many people in this little town will think it the
loveliest," said Ellen's sister. "Its browns and blues will be too dull
for them, and Ellen's old Turkey carpet too different from their polished
floors and 'antique' rugs. By the way, Ellen, how old do you suppose that
carpet is, anyhow?"
"It's been on Aunt Lucy's floors since before the Civil War. Isn't it
beautifully faded?--it furnishes the keynote of the whole room. Isn't it
fortunate that the room should be so long and low, instead of high and
square? Is it a restful room, girls? That's what I'm after."
"Restful!" Mrs. Chester clasped her hands in a speaking gesture. "Red
will forget every care, the minute he steps into it. When are you going
to show it to him?"
"To-night, when the fire is lighted and evening office-hours are over. If
he hadn't been so busy it would have been hard to keep him away, but he
hasn't had an hour to spare even for guessing what I've been doing."
"I hope he'll have an hour to spare, to stay in it with you. How you both
will hate the sound of the office-bell and the telephones!"
"I'm going to try hard not to, but I suppose I shall dread them, in spite
of myself," Ellen owned.
"This great couch, facing the fire, with all these lovely blue silk
pillows, is certainly the most comfortable looking thing I ever saw,"
sighed Winifred Chester, casting her plump little figure into the
davenport's roomy depths and clasping her hands under her head in an
attitude of repose.
"If Red doesn't send out word that he's not at home and can't be found,
when a call finds him stretched out here, he's a stronger character than
I think him."
"Now let's go up and look at the guest-rooms." Ellen led the way, an
engaging figure in a fresh white morning dress, her cheeks glowing with
colour like a girl's.
"If you didn't know, would you ever dream she had been wife and widow,
and had lost her little son?" murmured Winifred in Martha's ear.
Martha Macauley shook her head. "She seems to have gone back and begun
all over again. Yet there's a look--"
Winifred nodded. "Of course there is--a look she wouldn't have had if she
hadn't gone through so much. It's given her such a rich sort of bloom."
The guest-rooms were airy, attractive, chintz-hung rooms, one large, one
somewhat smaller, but both wearing a hospitable look of readiness.
"I like the gray-and-rose room best," announced Winifred, after a
critical survey, as if she were inspecting both rooms for the first time
instead of the fortieth. She had made the gray-and-rose chintz hangings
herself, delighting in each exquisite yard of the fine imported material.
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