A PACKAGE OF LETTERS

Under the influence of the new arrival it was not at all strange that many changes were wrought in the domestic life at Cobden Manor.

My lady was a sensuous creature, loving color and flowers and the dainty appointments of life as much in the surroundings of her home as in the adornment of her person, and it was not many weeks before the old-fashioned sitting-room had been transformed into a French boudoir.  In this metamorphosis she had used but few pieces of new furniture—­one or two, perhaps, that she had picked up in the village, as well as some bits of mahogany and brass that she loved—­but had depended almost entirely upon the rearrangement of the heirlooms of the family.  With the boudoir idea in view, she had pulled the old tables out from the walls, drawn the big sofa up to the fire, spread a rug—­one of her own—­before the mantel, hung new curtains at the windows and ruffled their edges with lace, banked the sills with geraniums and begonias, tilted a print or two beside the clock, scattered a few books and magazines over the centre-table, on which she had placed a big, generous lamp, under whose umbrella shade she could see to read as she sat in her grandmother’s rocking-chair—­in fact, had, with that taste inherent in some women—­touched with a knowing hand the dead things about her and made them live and mean something;—­her talisman being an unerring sense of what contributed to personal comfort.  Heretofore Doctor John had been compelled to drag a chair halfway across the room in order to sit and chat with Jane, or had been obliged to share her seat on the sofa, too far from the hearth on cold days to be comfortable.  Now he could either stand on the hearth-rug and talk to her, seated in one corner of the pulled-up sofa, her work-basket on a small table beside her, or he could drop into a big chair within reach of her hand and still feel the glow of the fire.  Jane smiled at the changes and gave Lucy free rein to do as she pleased.  Her own nature had never required these nicer luxuries; she had been too busy, and in these last years of her life too anxious, to think of them, and so the room had been left as in the days of her father.

The effect of the rearrangement was not lost on the neighbors.  They at once noticed the sense of cosiness everywhere apparent, and in consequence called twice as often, and it was not long before the old-fashioned sitting-room became a stopping-place for everybody who had half an hour to spare.

These attractions, with the aid of a generous hospitality, Lucy did her best to maintain, partly because she loved excitement and partly because she intended to win the good-will of her neighbors—­those who might be useful to her.  The women succumbed at once.  Not only were her manners most gracious, but her jewels of various kinds, her gowns of lace and frou-frou, her marvellous hats, her assortment of parasols, her little personal belongings and niceties—­ gold scissors, thimbles, even the violet ribbons that rippled through her transparent underlaces—­so different from those of any other woman they knew—­ were a constant source of wonder and delight.  To them she was a beautiful Lady Bountiful who had fluttered down among them from heights above, and whose departure, should it ever take place, would leave a gloom behind that nothing could illumine.