“Oh, thank you,” said Ellen. She stood hesitating, after saying a halting, awkward good-bye to the doctor. It was not easy to leave his friendly presence and impossible to thank him as she wanted to. But she turned and in the wake of Marie climbed the broad front steps. Their carved, heavy banisters and the thick rugs rebuked her. It was as though she realized that in this well-ordered house it would be rarely indeed that she would tread them. Here she was more definitely placed than she would ever have been at the Meadowburns’. As they passed the second story landing two very small, cleanly dressed boys came out of a big bedroom, with a matronly hospital nurse between them. VII Ellen spent her days learning more about the quaint art of cookery than she ever dreamed there was to know, and discovering the ways of rich people which were strange indeed. One of the first things that impressed her was the unvarying quiet. Never was a voice raised that could be heard beyond the room in which it was spoken, and this applied even to the young masters, who, if they ever made a regular boy-racket, must have done so behind the closed doors of the nursery. Compared to the shouting up and down stairs, the banging of pianos and doors, the general uproar of the Meadowburn household, this was like living in a church. The stately high ceilings and big stained glass windows intensified the illusion. And the armies of tradesmen who came! She had been accustomed to dealing with one butcher, one grocer, one baker. Here there were dozens who handled a farrago of specialties. There were three or four different dessert-makers, a pork butcher, a beef butcher, a poultry butcher, and a fish monger of high degree; there were a plain grocer, a grocer-importer, a wine-dealer, a liquor agent, coffee merchants and tea merchants, purveyors of spices and sweet-meats, apothecaries and fruiterers, dealers in milk, eggs and butter, and a score of others whose business did not happen to be with Ellen. All day they came and went. She had thought that supplying a kitchen was a matter of taking in a certain fixed number of staples and making the most of them. But here she found herself in the midst of an immense variety of esoteric materials whose names suggested the index of a geography. The kitchen with its vast conveniences for housing all these things in their appointed places was not unlike a large shop itself. Formal dinner parties there were, but they were rare during those days, because of the sick woman in the house. And it was well they were! thought she, judging by the lavishness of those she helped to prepare. Mrs. Seymour, however, gave many luncheons to her friends, and for these Ellen delighted to outdo herself, since Aunt Mathilda was not ungenerous with compliments when they were deserved.