all round, only one must be a little pationate."

But a week, ten days, had gone by, since Martha announced she had _an
idea_, and still the idea had not materialized. Meanwhile, Claire had
ample time to unpack her trunk and settle her belongings about her, so
"the pretty lady's room" took on a look of real comfort, and the
children never passed the door without pausing before the threshold,
waiting with bated breath for some wonderful chance that would give
them a "peek" into the enchanted chamber. As a matter of fact, the
transformation was effected with singularly few "properties." Some good
photographs tastefully framed in plain, dark wood. A Baghdad rug left
over from her college days, some scraps of charming old textiles, and
such few of the precious home trifles as could be safely packed in her
trunk. There was a daguerreotype of her mother, done when she was a
girl. "As old-fashioned as your grandmother's hoopskirt," Martha called
it. A sampler wrought by some ancient great-aunt, both aunt and sampler
long since yellowed and mellowed by the years. A della Robbia plaque,
with its exquisite swaddled baby holding out eager arms, as if to be
taken. A lacquer casket, a string of Egyptian mummy-beads--what seemed
to the children an inexhaustible stock of wonderful, mysterious
treasures.

But the object that appeared to interest their mother more than anything
else in the whole collection, was a book of unmounted photographs,
snap-shots taken by Claire at college, during her travels abroad, some
few, even, here in the city during those first days when she had dreamed
it was easy to walk straight into an art-editorship, and no questions
asked.

Mrs. Slawson scrutinized the prints with an earnestness so eager that