“We shall be.  And—­I haven’t any more things, if you must have it.  When the estate was sold I bought in all I could afford, but have sold some since.  You may as well know it, but I want you to understand that I don’t consider it a hardship at all to live as I intend to live this year.  I shall be making money hand over fist, presently, and by the time I have had my city studio a year or two shall be affording Eastern rugs and hand-carved furniture.  Wait and see!”

She stopped polishing and stood looking at her friend with the peculiar, radiant look which was her greatest charm, her dark eyes glowing, her lips in proud, sweet lines of resolution, her round chin held high.  Then she laughed, throwing her head higher yet, with a gay spirit; came forward and caught Ellen Burns by the shoulders and bending kissed her.

“I told you I wasn’t proud,” she said, “but I am! Too proud to be proud! I never believed in the pride which covers up, but in that which frankly owns its poverty, and laughs at it.  I laugh!”

“You splendid girl!  Where did you get it?”

“Picked it up.  But I really think I shall have the happiest year out of this I’ve known yet.”

“I believe you will.  And I shall delight in having you so near.”

The two descended.  By the time Mrs. Kelsey’s work-day was over the front room was in order, and Charlotte, bidding good-night to her servitors, gave them hearty praise and bade them come back early in the morning.  Ellen had gone home, bidding Charlotte follow her at convenience.

“I must run out and pick some flowers for my copper bowl,” Charlotte had said.  “Then the room will be ready to show your husband this evening.  I’m anxious to have it make a good impression on him, and I’ve discovered that men always notice posies.”

So, out in the tangled garden she chose a great bunch of delphinium, in mingled shadings from pale blues and lavenders to deepest sapphire tones, and bringing it in exultingly filled the copper bowl and set it on the old spindle-legged table opposite the fireplace.  Woven rag rugs in dull blues lay on the floor; one great winged chair, Granny’s chair, stood by the window.  Besides this were the splint-bottomed, high-backed chair, two Sheraton chairs, and a Chippendale mirror,—­all relics of a luxurious old home.  Two small portraits in oil hung upon the wall, painted by some master hand, portraits of Charlotte’s parents.  This was all the furnishing the room contained, but somehow, in the warm light of the late July afternoon, it looked anything but bare.

The Chesters, the Macauleys and the Burnses, all came across the street in the early July evening, to view the work which had been done.  Charlotte had slipped on a thin white gown and pinned a bunch of old-fashioned crimson-and-pink “bleeding-hearts” at her waist, to do the occasion honour.  She looked, somehow, already as if she belonged with the place.  She sat upon the doorstone and hemmed small muslin curtains which were to go in the bedrooms upstairs, and Martha, Winifred, and Ellen, seeing this, sent for their sewing materials and helped her, while the daylight lasted.