Therefore rather timidly Pauline opened the door of the little room that was both parlor and dining-room. Any one could see that the room belonged to people who loved music. The old-fashioned grand-piano was under protection of busts of Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner; and Mysie’s violin stood in the corner, near a bookcase full of musical biographies. An air of exquisite neatness was like an aroma of lavender in the room, and with it was fused a prim good taste, such as might properly belong to gentlewomen who had learned the household arts when the rule of three was sacred, and every large ornament must be attended by a smaller one on either side. And an observer of a gentle mind, furthermore, might have found a kind of pathos in the shabbiness of it all; for everything fine was worn and faded, and everything new was coarse. The portrait of the Lieutenant-Governor faced the door. For company it had on either side small engravings of Webster and Clay. Beneath it was placed the tea-table, ready spread. The cloth was of good quality, but thin with long service. On the table a large plate of bread held the place of importance, with two small plates on either corner, the one containing a tiny slice of suspiciously yellow butter, and the other a cone of solid jelly. Such jelly they sell at the groceries out of firkins. A glass jug of tea stood by a plated ice-water jug of a pattern highly esteemed before the war. Henriette was stirring a small lump of ice about the sides of the tea-jug. She greeted Pauline pleasantly. “Iced tea?” said Pauline. “I thought we were to have hot tea and sausages and toast. I gave Mysie twenty-five cents for them this morning.” She did not say that it was the money for more than one day’s luncheon. “Yes, Mysie said something about it,” said Henriette, “but it didn’t seem worth while to burn up so much wood merely to heat the water for tea; and toast uses up so much butter.” “But I gave Mysie a dollar to buy a little oil-stove that we could use in summer; and there was the sausage; I don’t mean to find fault, sister Etty, but I’m ravenously hungry.”