“No, I’m sure I couldn’t,” Laura had answered, laughing a little, but a little irritated, nevertheless, at Kitty’s tone; and when Kitty had gone on and declared that nobody could be more appreciative than herself, Laura had retorted,—­

“Yes; but you make great mistakes in your appreciations.  You wouldn’t appreciate Esther’s own sweetness and refinement at their real worth, if the carpets and curtains and chairs and things in the house on McVane Street didn’t happen to please your taste.”

These words of hers returned to Laura with great force as the door of the house on McVane Street was opened to her, and she found herself in a chilly hall, darkly papered and darkly and shabbily carpeted; and when she followed Esther up the stairs,—­for it was Esther who had answered her ring,—­and noted the general dreariness of the whole, she thought pityingly, “Poor Esther, to be obliged to live in such a dismal fashion.”

It was in this depressed state of mind that she came to the top of the stairs.  Here Esther was waiting for her; and as she pushed wide open a door in front of her, she said brightly, “Here we are,” and Laura, turning, stood for a moment dumb with surprise, as she saw a room that by contrast with the dinginess of the halls looked almost luxurious, for it was all lightness and brightness and warmth and sweet odors, with the sunshine streaming in upon a window full of plants, and touching up a quantity of woodcuts, photographs, and water-colors, with a few oils, and two or three fine etchings,—­all of which pretty nearly hid the ugly dark wallpaper.  A little coal fire in a low grate made things still brighter, and brought out the soft faded reds of the rug, and purples and yellows of the worn chintz covers of lounge and chairs.  And right in the lightest and brightest spot of all this lightness and brightness stood a little claw-footed round table, bearing an old-fashioned tea-service of china.  The sunshine seemed actually to fill up the cups and spill over into the gilt-bordered saucers, as Laura looked.  “It is a ‘sunset tea,’ indeed,” she said to herself; “and if Kitty Grant could see how pretty and refined were the simple arrangements, she wouldn’t mix Esther up with any horrid common emigrants, if she does live on McVane Street.  Esther a foreigner of any kind!  Nothing could be more absurd.  Esther was a New England girl, if ever there was one,—­a little New England girl, who had come up with her mother to Boston from the Cape perhaps to learn to be a teacher.  Yes, that must be the explanation of McVane Street.  The Bodns were people who had come up from the country, and country people of small means wouldn’t be likely to know where to choose a home.”