And I, glancing at the splendid frame against the whitewashed wall, recklessly made answer: “And it is not absolutely absent at this moment.”
Her bright, old eye glanced from wall to frame, then back to me, her quick comprehension making my unfinished thought her finished one in an instant. She wagged her head and said: “That’s not bad, you girl,” then, with somewhat unnerving loudness, she went on: “She’s young and green, oh! but upon my soul, she’s not a fool.” Then addressing me again: “So you know some French sayings, do you? Not many though, I think; but look, you, young ears are sharp, and you should have been here before the hangings of my bed fell to bits. They were of brocatelle and lined with silk, and they cursed that whitewashed wall so venomously, had you been here in the bed, you’d not have slept one wink, unless your soul’s already gray instead of white,” and she laughed that odd, stinging laughter that was so like the crackling of thin ice upon a wintry day.
While she had talked and laughed and nodded, she had prepared her coffee, and we seated ourselves at either side of the little table, she taking care to sit facing the tossing lake.
Oh, that tray! It really seemed as though the things thereon must come to blows, so fiercely did they contradict each other. The coffee pot of make and material precisely like those good “Bridgets” purchase for the use of honest “Patricks.” The knives and forks--they appeared a bit later--were of that brand which always makes you wish that you were dead, they make of life a thing so hideous. While cheek by jowl with these rough things stood a few pieces of old porcelain, deserving, each one of them, a satin-lined box to rest in. And to keep them in countenance, there were four spoons of silver, paper-thin, initials and dates quite worn away, and all a trifle bent and dented in spite of the owner’s care of them; while the linen, I could have cried over that eye-destroying mass of delicate darning. Truly, there were places in my napkin where the darning had itself been darned again. But the coffee, like the fire, which had been increased by the addition of one small cube of coal, was inadequate in quantity, but the quality? oh, well, it was perfection, that’s all; absolute perfection.