But oh, it was a weariness, it was an unspeakable weariness. Father made no secret of his age; he was eighty-four. As for Edith and Emily—well, he looked now like their elder brother. An old, old brother and two ancient sisters, so the lovely room might have summed them up. But its shaded brightness, its beauty, the flutter of leaves at the creamy stone windows seemed only to whisper “Rest! Stay!” Edith looked at the pale, green-panelled walls, at the doors that had lozenges and squares of green picked out in gold. She made the amazing discovery that the floor had the same pattern in wood that was traced on the high, painted ceiling. But the colour of the shining floor was marvellous; it was like tortoiseshell. In one corner there was a huge, tilted stove, milky white and blue. The low wooden bed, with its cover of quilted yellow satin, had sheaves of corn carved on the bed posts. It looked to fanciful, tired Edith—yes,—that bed looked as if it were breathing, softly, gently breathing. Outside the narrow, deep-set windows, beyond their wreaths of green, she could see a whole, tiny landscape bright as a jewel in the summer heat. “Rest! Stay!” Was it the sound of the leaves outside? No, it was in the air; it was the room itself that whispered joyfully, shyly. Edith felt so strange that she could keep quiet no longer. “This is a very old room, Emily,” she warbled softly. “I know what it is. This hotel has not always been a hotel. It’s been an old château. I feel as sure of that as that I’m standing here.” Perhaps she wanted to convince herself that she was standing there. “Do you see that stove?” She walked over to the stove. “It’s got figures on it. Emily,” she warbled faintly, “It’s 1623.” “Isn’t that too wonderful!” cried Emily. Even Father was deeply moved. “1623? Nearly three hundred years old.” And suddenly, in spite of his tiredness, he gave a thin, airy, old man’s chuckle. “Makes yer feel quite a chicken, don’t it?” said Father. Emily’s breathless little laugh answered him; it too was gay. “I’m going to see what’s behind that door,” she cried. And half running to the door in the middle wall she lifted the slender steel catch. It led into a larger room, into Edith’s and her bedroom. But the walls were the same and the floor, and there were the same deep-set windows. Only two beds instead of one stood side by side with blue silk quilts instead of yellow. And what a beautiful old chest there was under the windows! “Oh,” cried Emily, in rapture. “Isn’t it all too perfectly historical for words, Edith! It makes me feel——” She stopped, she looked at Edith who had followed her and whose thin shadow lay on the sunny floor. “Queer!” said Emily, trying to put all she felt into that one word. “I don’t know what it is.”