The Captain turned off the piazza into one of those old-fashioned Southern rooms with full-length windows, which were really glazed doors, a ceiling so high that Peter could make out only vague concentric rings of stucco-work among the shadows overhead, and a floor space of ball-room proportions.  In one corner was a huge canopy bed, across from it a clothes-press of dark wood, and in another corner a large screen hiding the bathing arrangements.

Peter’s bedroom was a sleeping apartment, in the old sense of the word before the term “apartment” had lost its dignity.

The Captain placed the lamp on the great table and indicated Peter’s possession with a wave of the hand.

“If you stay here, Peter, I will put in a call-bell, so I can awaken you if I need you during the night.  Now I wish you healthful slumbers and pleasant dreams.”  With that the old gentleman withdrew ceremoniously.

When the Captain was gone, the mulatto remained standing in the vast expanse, marveling over this queer turn of fortune.  Why Captain Renfrew had selected him as a secretary and companion Peter could not fancy.

The magnificence of his surroundings revived his late dream of a honeymoon with Cissie.  Certainly, in his fancy, he had visioned a honeymoon in Pullman parlor cars and suburban bungalows.  He had been mistaken.  This great chamber rose about him like a corrected proof of his desire.

Into just such a room he would like to lead Cissie; into this great room that breathed pride and dignity.  What a glowing heart the girl would have made for its somber magnificence!

He walked over to the full-length windows and opened them; then he unbolted the jalousies outside and swung them back.  The musk of autumn weeds breathed in out of the darkness.  Peter drew a long breath, with a sort of wistful melting in his chest.

CHAPTER IX

A turmoil aroused Peter Siner the next morning, and when he discovered where he was, in the big canopy bed in the great room, he listened curiously and heard a continuous chattering and quarreling.  After a minute or two he recognized the voice of old Rose Hobbett.  Rose was cooking the Captain’s breakfast, and she performed this function in a kind of solitary rage.  She banged the vessels, slammed the stove-eyes on and off, flung the stove-wood about, and kept up a snarling animadversion upon every topic that drifted through her kinky head.  She called the kitchen a rat-hole, stated the Captain must be as mean as the devil to live as long as he did, complained that no one ever paid any attention to her, that she might as well be a stray cat, and so on.