"What a dreadful old place it is," said Mab; "it is like coming home to one's grave," and she sat down on the black haircloth easy-chair and shivered and cried; though this was coming home, to the house in which she had been born.
"Now it will be better," said Cicely pulling up the blinds and opening the window. She had more command of herself than her sister. She let the sunshine come down in a flood across the dingy carpet, worn with the use of twenty years.
"Please, miss," said Betsy interposing, "missis would never have the blinds up in this room 'cause of spoiling the carpet. If master says so, I don't mind; but till he do----" and here Betsy put up her hand to the blind.
"Do you venture to meddle with what my sister does?" cried Mab, furious, springing from her chair.
Cicely only laughed. "You are a good girl to mind what your mistress said, but we are your mistresses now; you must let the window alone, for don't you see the carpet is spoiled already? I will answer to papa. What is it? Do you want anything more?"
"Only this, miss," said Betsy, "as it's the first laugh as has been heard here for weeks and weeks, and I don't like it neither, seeing as missis is in her grave only a fortnight to-day."
"I think you are a very good girl," said Cicely: and with that the tears stood in that changeable young woman's eyes.
No Betsy that ever was heard of could long resist this sort of treatment. "I tries to be, miss," she said with a curtsy and a whimper. "Maybe you'd like a cup of tea?" and after following them suspiciously all over the house, she left them at last on this hospitable intent in the fading drawing-room, where they had both enshrined the memory of their mother. Another memory was there now, a memory as faded as the room, which showed in all kinds of feeble feminine decorations, bits of modern lace, and worked cushions and foolish foot-stools. The room was all pinafored and transmogrified, the old dark picture-frames covered with yellow gauze, and the needlework in crackling semi-transparent covers.
"This was how she liked things, poor soul! Oh, Mab," cried Cicely, "how strange that she should die!"
"No stranger than that any one else should die," said Mab, who was more matter of fact.