And a head, brown-locked, blue-eyed, soft-featured, looked in at the open door in answer to the call.
"Just bring me the third volume of 'Wilhelm Meister,'--there's a dear. It's hardly worth while to rouse such a restless ghost as I, when I'm once fairly laid."
As she spoke, Di pushed up her black braids, thumped the pillow of the couch where she was lying, and with eager eyes went down the last page of her book.
"Yes, Laura," replied the girl, coming back with the third volume for the literary cormorant, who took it with a nod, still too intent upon the "Confessions of a Fair Saint" to remember the failings of a certain plain sinner.
"Don't forget the Italian cream for dinner. I depend upon it; for it's the only thing fit for me this hot weather."
And Laura, the cool blonde, disposed the folds of her white gown more gracefully about her, and touched up the eyebrow of the Minerva she was drawing.
"Let me have plenty of clean collars in my bag, for I must go at three; and some of you bring me a glass of cider in about an hour;--I shall be in the lower garden."
The old man went away into his imaginary paradise, and Nan into that domestic purgatory on a summer day,--the kitchen. There were vines about the windows, sunshine on the floor, and order everywhere; but it was haunted by a cooking-stove, that family altar whence such varied incense rises to appease the appetite of household gods, before which such dire incantations are pronounced to ease the wrath and woe of the priestess of the fire, and about which often linger saddest memories of wasted temper, time, and toil.
Nan was tired, having risen with the birds,--hurried, having many cares those happy little housewives never know,--and disappointed in a hope that hourly "dwindled, peaked, and pined." She was too young to make the anxious lines upon her forehead seem at home there, too patient to be burdened with the labor others should have shared, too light of heart to be pent up when earth and sky were keeping a blithe holiday. But she was one of that meek sisterhood who, thinking humbly of themselves, believe they are honored by being spent in the service of less conscientious souls, whose careless thanks seem quite reward enough.