and a narrow window where I always had a bunch of fresh green ferns in a tall champagne-glass.  I used to write there often, and always sat there when Kate sang and played.  She sent for a tuner, and used to successfully coax the long-imprisoned music from the antiquated piano, and sing for her visitors by the hour.  She almost always sang her oldest songs, for they seemed most in keeping with everything about us.  I used to fancy that the portraits liked our being there.  There was one young girl who seemed solitary and forlorn among the rest in the room, who were all middle-aged.  For their part they looked amiable, but rather unhappy, as if she had come in and interrupted their conversation.  We both grew very fond of her, and it seemed, when we went in the last morning on purpose to take leave of her, as if she looked at us imploringly.  She was soon afterward boxed up, and now enjoys society after her own heart in Kate’s room in Boston.

There was the largest sofa I ever saw opposite the fireplace; it must have been brought in in pieces, and built in the room.  It was broad enough for Kate and me to lie on together, and very high and square; but there was a pile of soft cushions at one end.  We used to enjoy it greatly in September, when the evenings were long and cool, and we had many candles, and a fire—­and crickets too—­on the hearth, and the dear dog lying on the rug.  I remember one rainy night, just before Miss Tennant and Kitty Bruce went away; we had a real drift-wood fire, and blew out the lights and told stories.  Miss Margaret knows so many and tells them so well.  Kate and I were unusually entertaining, for we became familiar with the family record of the town, and could recount marvellous adventures by land and sea, and ghost-stories by the dozen.  We had never either of us been in a society consisting of so many travelled people!  Hardly a man but had been the most of his life at sea.  Speaking of ghost-stories, I must tell you that once in the summer two Cambridge girls who were spending a week with us unwisely enticed us into giving some thrilling recitals, which nearly frightened them out of their wits, and Kate and I were finally in terror ourselves.  We had all been on the sofa in the dark, singing and talking, and were waiting in great suspense after I had finished one of such particular horror that I declared it should be the last, when we heard footsteps on the hall stairs.  There were lights in the dining-room which shone faintly through the half-closed door, and we saw something white and shapeless come slowly down, and clutched each other’s gowns in agony.  It was only Kate’s dog, who came in and laid his head in her lap and slept peacefully.  We thought we could not sleep a wink after this, and I bravely went alone out to the light to see my watch, and, finding it was past twelve, we concluded to sit up all night and to go down to the shore at sunrise, it would be so much easier than getting up early some morning.  We had been out rowing and had taken a long walk the day before, and were obliged to dance and make other slight exertions to keep ourselves awake at one time.  We lunched at two, and I never shall forget the sunrise that morning; but we were singularly quiet and abstracted that day, and indeed for several days after Deephaven was “a land in which it seemed always afternoon,” we breakfasted so late.