mortar!--the room was ridiculously large! On the smooth white walls
reddish shadows moved in a fantastic procession, and from the big
chintz-covered lounge the monstrous blue poppies leaped out of the
firelight. The high canopy over the bed was draped with prim folds of
damask, and the coverlet was of some quaint crocheted work that hung in
fringed ends to the floor. Here again from the threadbare velvet carpet
the blue poppies stared back at him.

An acorn dropped on the roof, and in spite of Molly's warning, he
started and glanced toward the window, where a frosted pattern of ivy
showed like a delicate lacework on the small greenish panes. Another
dropped; then another. Gradually he began to listen for the sound and to
miss it when there came a long silence. One might easily imagine it
to be the tapping of ghostly fingers--of the fingers of pretty Janet
Merryweather--some quarter of a century earlier. Her daughter was hardly
more than twenty now, he supposed, and he wondered how long the mad
idyllic period had lasted before her birth? Turning to the books on the
table, he opened one and a yellowed fragment of paper fluttered to the
floor at his feet. When he stooped after it, he saw that there was a
single word on it traced faintly in his uncle's hand: "To-morrow."

And then, being a person whose imagination dealt with the obvious,
he undressed, blew out the light, and fell peacefully asleep to the
dropping of acorns.



CHAPTER IV