Just, returning, shouted. "Trust 'em both to get round anything that may
turn up! 'That's great!' is certainly safe and non-committal of a
four-foot motto that's of no earthly use."
"Well, but I like it," Doctor Churchill asserted, and came over to
Charlotte's side, where he examined the copper slab with attention.
"Don't you believe that will pretty nearly fit the depression in the
fireplace just above the shelf?"
Her interested look responded to his. "Why, I believe it will!" she
answered.
"Who sent it?"
"We can't find out."
"No card? That's odd. But there may be something about it to show. It
looks to me as if it had been made for that place. If it proves to fit,
we can narrow the mystery down to the few people who have seen the new
fireplace. Let's go over and try, shall we? Come on--everybody!"
Accordingly, the whole company streamed out across the lawn--Charlotte
and Doctor Churchill, Celia, her pretty blond head shining in the
October sunlight, Lanse and Jeff and Just, three stalwart fellows,
ranging in ages from twenty-six to sixteen, Mr. and Mrs. Birch, the
happy possessors of this happy clan.
They hurried up the two steps of the small front porch, into the brick
house, and stampeded into the front room. They stopped opposite the
fireplace, where Doctor Churchill was already triumphantly inserting the
copper panel--for that is what it instantly became--in the long,
horizontal depression in the fireplace.
"It fits to a hair!" he exclaimed, and a general murmur of approbation
arose. Now that the odd gift was where it so clearly belonged, its
peculiar beauty became evident even to the skeptical Jeff and Just.
The new fireplace was the heart of the little old house. Moreover, so
cunningly had it been designed and built that it seemed to have been in
its place from the beginning.
Doctor Churchill and Charlotte had made a certain distant field the
object of many walks and drives, and had personally selected the
"hardheads" of which the fireplace was constructed. A small bedroom,
opening off the square little parlour, had had its partition removed,
and in this alcove-like end of the room the fireplace had been built.
The effect was very good, and the resulting apartment, the only one on
the lower floor which could be spared for general use, had become at
once the place upon which Charlotte was concentrating most of her
efforts, meaning to make it a room where everybody should wish to come.
The usual interruption of a summons for Doctor Churchill to the office
in the wing sent the assembled company off again. Just as Charlotte was
leaving the room, however--the last of all, because she could not bring
herself to desert the joy of the copper panel in its setting of gray
stone--Doctor Churchill hurriedly returned.
Seeing Charlotte alone and about to vanish, he ran after her and drew
her back.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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