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“Of course, Miss, it’ll seem lonesome like and different at first. But you’ll get used to it, you know. A body can get used to anything in time. I suppose Californy’s a terrible hot place, now ain’t it? So it’s a good job you’ve come away from it before the summer. That old man of yours, he’s a queer stick, I judge. But polite, why he’s real polite. And old. That’s a fine thing, too. If he’d been young, Madam would have sent him about his business so fast ’twould have made him dizzy. But she likes everything old. Having old folks about her makes her forget her own age and fancy herself still a mere girl. Never remind my lady that she’s not as young as she used to be and you’ll get on—get on, fairly well, that is. Now, ready? Is that the kind of frock you generally wear?”

Barnes had comfortably rested in a rocker while Jessica washed and brushed at the great washstand, furnished with such expensive and badly nicked china, in one corner of the great chamber. The rocker had been overlooked, in the preparation of this room for a young girl’s use, and would have been removed had Madam remembered it. She herself disdained the use of such a chair and considered it totally unfit for well-bred people. Easy chairs of ancient and ample proportions—these were quite different; but until of late, since that accident which Barnes had mentioned, she had herself never occupied aught but the straight-backed ones, such as had been the correct thing in her childhood.