"If anyone did that on purpose," said Brownlow as Gheena came back to him, "it was a dirty thing to do."
"He won't forget, though," said Gheena carelessly. "And he doesn't care. Miss O'Toole might have done it."
"Don't you ever judge Don't-cares by appearances, young lady," he snapped. "And don't judge that boy, because he's a good sort, or I'm no judge myself."
Mrs. Weston, in flaming pink silk high to the throat, and wearing a becoming feather boa because she had a cold, had disappeared from view with Mr. Keefe. A murmur of voices from the firelit library indicated their retreat.
Darby, by the blazing drawing-room fire, looked on. He could not romp with the grown-up children, and no one could settle to Bridge. Some of the sadness of any anniversary fell on him. How many Christmases had come and gone in that old room! How many generations of white-frocked mites, grown year by year to girls and boys, to men and women, until they sat by the fire and tried to forget that soon they must go alone into the unknown! The withered-handed, tottering people, with their little pleasures of warmth, which glows as new life into their blood; of some favourite dish; or of love for the youth crowding them out of life--their lives are of the day; they are past looking back and dare not look forward. So the hours of waking after fitful sleep to the time when, tired out, they seek it again--makes each day a life to them. How many gay brides had fluttered in new finery to their new home, wives of the three-bottle men of old days, when shutters were shut at five and the day old by night!--women who had no voice in life. Subservient, early Victorian wives, advanced now to dinner at seven, putting away the fragile lovely furniture which had delighted their forbears, filling the room with hideous heaviness, with round tables and mirrors, and stiff arm-chairs and clumsy cabinets. A later Victorian, Gheena's grandmother, rejoicing in an outbreak of macrame-edged brackets, of good china entombed in red plush mounts, of black and gold, of chenille monkeys, and satin antimacassars worked over with rosebuds or forget-me-nots.
An old house must be a sad thing, a looker-on at the life which comes and goes within its portals--the birth so gladly hailed, to the solemn tramp of heavily-laden men and the flower-smothered coffin standing in the hall.