Jenny laughed aloud, but Mrs. Baumhagen rustled so angrily into the next room that all the ribbons on her rather youthful toilette fluttered and waved in the air.
"Gertrude!" cried Jenny, "you will not be so senseless!"
The young wife made no reply. She opened a wardrobe door in the corridor and said,
"This is the linen, Jenny; we need so much in the country. That is the chest for the finest linen and for the china, and this is my room. This way, mamma."
"It might have been a little less simple," remarked her mother, who had recovered herself, though the flush of excitement still rested on her full cheeks.
"I did not wish to be so very unlike Frank, who kept his old furniture; besides we are only in moderate circumstances, you know, mamma, and we are only just beginning."
Her mother cleared her throat and sat down in one of the small arm-chairs. Jenny wandered about the room, looking at the pictures and ornaments, slightly humming to herself as she did so. Gertrude stood thoughtfully beside her mother and felt her heart grow cold as ice. It was the old feeling of estrangement which always thrust itself between her and her mother and sister--they had nothing in common. She grieved over it as she had always done, but she no longer felt the bitter pain of former days. Slowly her hand sought the pocket of her dress, and touched lightly a rustling paper--"Thou art unspeakably beloved." Ah, that was compensation enough for anything, and she lifted her head with a happy smile.
"But you have not told me anything about your delightful journey yet, and your letters were so very short."
"O, yes," said Jenny, yawning as she took up a terra cotta figure and gazed at it on all sides, "it was perfectly delightful in Nice. Now that I am back again, I begin to feel what a provincial little circle it is that we vegetate in here."
"We will go again, next year, Providence permitting," added Mrs. Baumhagen. "Only I must beg to be excused from Arthur's company. He was really just as childish as your father used to be in his time. Jenny must not do this and Jenny should not do that, mustn't go here and mustn't stand there, in short he was a perfect torment, as if we women did not know ourselves what it is proper to do."