He lingered longest in a room over whose door was painted The Hilarium. It had evidently been a nursery and schoolroom. Here on the walls were many shelves wound over with networks of cobwebs, and piled with the oddest assemblage of toys: wooden and splintered soldiers that had once been bravely painted, dolls in various states of worn-outness—one rag doll in a calico dress with shoe-button eyes and a string of bright glass beads round her neck—a wooden box of marbles, a tattered boxing-glove. There were school-books, too, thumbed and dog-eared, from First Reader to C sar’s Gallic Wars, with names of small Valiants scrawled on their fly-leaves. He carefully relocked the door of this room; he wanted to dust those toys and books with his own hands. In the upper hall again he leaned from the window, [Pg 147]sniffing the far-flung scent of orchards and peach-blown fence-rows. The soft whirring sound of a bird’s wing went past, almost brushing his startled face, and the old oaks seemed to stretch their bent limbs with a faithful brute-like yawn of pleasure. In the room below he could hear the vigorous sound of Aunt Daphne’s hard-driven broom and the sound flooded the echoing space with a comfortable commotion. The present task was one after Aunt Daphne’s own heart. A small mountain of dust was growing on the terrace, and as beneath brush and rag the colors of wall and parquetry stood forth, her face became one shiny expanse of ebony satisfaction. When the bulldog, returning from his jaunt, out-stripping Uncle Jefferson, bounced in to prance against her she smote him lustily with her scrubbing-brush. “Git outer heah, yo’ good-fo’-nuffin’ w’ite rapscallyun! Gwine trapse yo’ muddy feet all ovah dis yeah floor, whut Ah jes’ scrubbed tell yo’ marstah kin eat off’n et?” She broke off to listen to Uncle Jefferson’s voice outside, directed toward the upper window. “Dat yo’, suh? Yas, suh, dis me. Well, suh, Ah take ol’ Sukey out de Red Road, en Ah hitch huh ter yo’ machine-thing, en she done balk. Won’t go nohow ... whut, suh? ‘Beat huh ovah de haid?’ Yas, suh, done hit huh in de haid six times [Pg 148]wid de whip-han’l, en she look me in de eye en ain’ said er word.... ‘Twis’ huh tail?’ Me, suh? No-suh-ree, suh. Mars’ Quarles’ boy one time he twis’ huh tail en dey sen’ him ter de horspit’l. ‘Daid,’ suh? No, suh, ain’ daid, but et mos’ bust him wide open.... ‘Set fiah undah huh?’ Yas, suh, done set fiah undah huh. Mos’ burn up de harness, en ain’ done no good.... Well, suh, Ah jes’ gwineter say no use waitin’ fo’ Sukey ter change huh min’, so Ah put some fence-rails undah huh en jock huh up en come home. En Ah’s gwine out arter suppah en Sukey be all right den, suh, Ah reck’n. Yas, suh.” Aunt Daphne plunged out with fire in her eye, but the laugh that came from above was reassuring. “Never mind, Uncle Jefferson, Miss Sukey’s whims shall be regarded.”