“No; I’m just used up, and so hungry,” he said, as he followed her into the cool family room, looking out upon the river, which she had made bright with flowers in expectation of his coming. “Hungry, are you?” she said. “I’m so glad, for there’s the fattest little chicken waiting to be broiled for you, and we have such splendid black and white raspberries. I’m going to pick them now, while you wash and brush yourself. You will find everything ready in your room, with some curtains, and tidies on the chairs. I did it myself, hoping you’d find it pleasant, and stay home all the vacation, even if your mother gets better, she is so happy to have you here. Will you go up now?” He went to the room which had always been his,—a large, airy chamber, which, with nothing modern or expensive in it, looked cool and pretty, with its clean matting, snowy bed, fresh muslin curtains, and new blue and white tidies on the high-backed chairs, all showing Rossie’s handiwork. Rossie had been in Miss Beatrice Belknap’s lovely room furnished with blue, and thought it a little heaven, and tried her best to make Mr. Everard’s a blue room too, though she had nothing to do it with except the tidies, and toilet set, and lambrequins made of plain white muslin bordered with strips of blue cambric. The material for this she had bought with her own allowance, at the cost of some personal sacrifice; and when it was all done, and the two large blue vases were filled with flowers and placed upon the mantel, she felt that it was almost equal to Miss Belknap’s, and that Mr. Everard, as she always called him, was sure to like it. And he did like it, and breathed more freely, as if he were in a purer, more wholesome atmosphere than that of the brown house in far-off Holburton, where he had left his secret and his wife. It came to him with a sudden wrench of pain in his quiet room,—the difference between Josephine and all his early associates and surroundings. She was not like anything at the Forrest House, though she was marvelously beautiful and fair,—so much fairer than little Rossie, whose white cape bonnet he could see flitting among the bushes in the garden, where in the hot sunshine she soiled and pricked her fingers gathering berries for him. He had a photograph of Josephine, and he took it out and looked at the great blue eyes and fair, blonde face, which seemed to smile on him, and saying to himself, “She is very lovely,” went down to the sitting-room, where Rossie brought him his breakfast. It was so hot in the dining-room, she said, and Aunt Axie was so out of sorts this morning, that she was going to serve his breakfast there in the bay window, where the breeze came cool from the river. So she brought in the tray of dishes, and creamed his coffee, and sugared his berries, and carved his chicken, as if he had been a prince, and she his lawful slave.