At noon the same day the old housekeeper, Mother Denise, and her pretty granddaughter Dionetta were busily employed setting in order and arranging the furniture in a suite of rooms intended for an expected visitor. There were but two floors in the House of White Shadows, and the rooms in which Mother Denise and Dionetta were busy were situated on the upper floor.
"I think they will do now," said Mother Denise, wiping imaginary dust away with her apron.
"All but the flowers." said Dionetta. "No, grandmother, that desk is wrong; it is my lady's own desk, and is to be placed exactly in this corner, by the window. There--it is right now. Be sure that everything is in its proper place, and that the rooms are sweet and bright--be sure--be sure! She has said that twenty times this week."
"Ah," said Mother Denise testily, "as if butterflies could teach bees how to work! My lady is turning your head, Dionetta, it is easy to see that; she has bewitched half the people in the village. Here is father, with the flowers. Haste, Martin, haste!"
"Easy to say, hard to do," grumbled Martin, entering slowly with a basket of cut flowers. "My bones get more obstinate every day. Here's my lady been teasing me out of my life to cut every flower worth looking at. She would have made the garden a wilderness, and spoilt every bed, if I had not argued with her."
"And what did she say," asked Mother Denise, "when you argued with her?"
"Say? Smiled, and showed all her white teeth at once. I never saw such teeth in my young days, nor such eyes, nor such hair, nor such hands--enough to drive a young man crazy."
"Or an old one either," interrupted Mother Denise. "She smiled as sweet as honey--you silly old man--and wheedled you, and wheedled you, till she got what she wanted."
"Pretty well, pretty well. You see, Dionetta, there are two ways of getting a thing done, a soft way and a hard way."
"There, there, there!" cried Mother Denise impatiently. "Do your work with a still tongue, and let us do ours. Get back to the garden, and repair the mischief my lady has caused you to do. What does a man want with a room full of roses?" she muttered, when Martin, quick to obey his domestic tyrant, had gone.
"It is a welcome home," said Dionetta. "If I were absent from my place a long, long while, it would make me feel glad when I returned, to see my rooms as bright as this. It is as though the very roses remembered you."