The impression of companionship--of whisperers breaking out, hands stretched forth, the steady magnetism of countless unseen eyes--was so strong that Hazel could not bear it, and even Reddin was glad to follow her back to the inhabited part of the house. 'This is the bedroom,' Reddin said, opening the door of a big room papered in faded grey, and full of the smell of bygone days. The great four-poster, draped with a chintz of roses on a black ground, awed her. Reddin opened a chest and took out the green dress. He watched her with an air of proud proprietorship as she put it on. She went down the shallow stairs like a leaf loosened from the tree. Vessons, a beer-bottle in either hand, was so aghast at the pale apparition that he nearly dropped them. 'I thought it was a ghost,' he said--'a comfortless ghost.' 'So I be comfortless,' Hazel said to Reddin when Vessons had retired. Her voice had a sound of tears in it, like a dark tide broken on rocks. 'And when I was comfortless at the Mountain Ed'ard was used to read "Comfort ye, my people," as nice as nice.' 'Are you fonder of Marston than of me?' 'I dunno.' She sat down sadly in the home that was not home. She remembered the half-finished collar she was knitting for Foxy. Also, a custom had grown up that she sang hymns in the evenings to Edward's accompaniment. She missed these things. She missed the irritations of that peaceful life--Mrs. Marston's way of clearing her throat softly and pertinaciously; Martha's habit of tidying all her little treasures into the kitchen grate; Edward's absurd determination that she should have clean nails; the ever-renewed argument, 'Foxy's a bad dog!' 'She inna. She's a good fox.' 'In my sight she's a bad dog.' Now she had floated free of all this. She was out of haven on the high seas. She felt very lonely--as the dead might feel, free of the shackles of life. It was certainly pleasant to wear the green dress. But she missed her little duties--clearing away the supper, Martha being gone; fetching the candles (Mrs. Marston always shook her head at the third, not from economy, but from vicarious philoprogenitiveness). Edward's reading of the Book last thing had made her restless; she had thought it a bother. Now it seemed a privilege. To most girls, God's Little Mountain would have been purgatory. To her it was wonderful. It was the first time she had shared in the peculiar beauty of home, the daily sacrament of love. Edward never forgot to kiss them both when he came in; brought them flowers; was always carpentering at surprises for them. These last never turned out very well, his technical skill not keeping pace with his enthusiasm; but Hazel was not critical.