sitting-room opposite, through the one window behind; and then through
the long, glowing afternoon, the whole bright west let him in along
the full length of the house, till he just turned the last corner, and
peeped in, on the longest summer days, at the very front. This was
what he had got so far as to do by the time we moved in,--as if he
stretched his very neck to find out the last there was to learn about
it, and whether nowhere in it were really yet any human life. He
quieted down in his mind, I suppose, when from morning to night he
found somebody to beam at, and a busy doing in every room. He took it
serenely then, as one of the established things upon the earth, and
put us in the regular list of homes upon his round, that he was to
leave so many cubic feet of light at daily.

I think he _might_ like to look in at that best parlor. With the six
snowy-curtained windows, it was like a great white blossom; and the
deep-green carpet and the walls with vine-leaves running all over
them, in the graceful-patterned paper that Rosamond chose, were like
the moss and foliage among which it sprung. Here and there the light
glinted upon gilded frame or rich bronze or pure Parian, and threw out
the lovely high tints, and deepened the shadowy effects, of our few
fine pictures. We had little of art, but that little was choice. It
was Mr. Holabird's weakness, when money was easy with him, to bring
home straws like these to the home nest. So we had, also, a good many
nice books; for, one at a time, when there was no hurrying bill to be
paid, they had not seemed much to buy; and in our brown room, where we
sat every day, and where our ivies had kindly wonted themselves
already to the broad, bright windows, there were stands and cases well
filled, and a great round family table in the middle, whose worn cloth
hid its shabbiness under the comfort of delicious volumes ready to the
hand, among which, central of all, stood the Shekinah of the