Cornelia cast a wondering look at him. She had not known her father thought so much of her mother. There was a half-glorified look on his face that made her think of a boy in love. It was queer to think it, but of course her mother and father had been young lovers once. Cornelia, her thoughts temporarily turned from her own brooding, followed into the desolate dining-room, and her heart sank. This was home! This was what she had come back to after all her dreams of a career and all her pride over an artistic temperament! There was a place set for her at one end of the red-clothed table, and a plaintive little supper drying up on the stove in the kitchen; but Cornelia was not hungry. She made pretence of nibbling at the single little burned lamb-chop and a heavy soda-biscuit. If she had known how the children had gone without meat to buy that lamb-chop, and how hard Louise had worked to make these biscuits and the apple-sauce that accompanied them, she might have been more appreciative; but as it was she was feeling very miserable indeed, and had no time from her own self-pitying thoughts to notice them at all. The dining-room was a dreary place. An old sofa that had done noble duty in the family when Cornelia was a baby lounged comfortably at one side, a catch-all for overcoats, caps, newspapers, bundles, mending, anything that happened along. Three of the dining-room chairs were more or less gone or emaciated in their seats. The cat was curled up comfortably in the old wooden rocker that had always gone by the name of “Father’s rocker,” and wore an ancient patchwork cushion. The floor was partly covered by a soiled and worn Axminster rug whose roses blushed redly still behind wood-colored scrolls on an indiscriminate background that no one would ever suspect of having been pearl-gray once upon a time. The wall-paper was an ugly dirty dark-red, with tarnished gold designs, torn in places and hanging down, greasy and marred where chairs had rubbed against it and heads had apparently leaned. It certainly was not a charming interior. She curled her lip slightly as she took it all in. This her home! And she a born artist and interior decorator! Her silence and lack of enthusiasm dampened the spirits of the children, who had looked to her coming to brighten the dreary aspect of things. They began to sit around silently and watch her, their keen young eyes presently searching out her thoughts, following her gaze from wall-paper to curtainless window, from broken chair to sagging couch. “We haven’t been able to get very much to rights,” sighed Louise in a suddenly grown-up, responsible tone, wrinkling her pink young brow into lines of care. “I wanted to put up some curtains before you got here, but I couldn’t find them. Father wouldn’t let me open the boxes till Carey came home to help. He said there was enough around for me to tend to, all alone, now.”