Once
she came over to our house with a basket, from one end of which were
thrust the sturdy red legs of a pullet. She informed us that she had
brought us one of Evangeline's daughters.
But I am getting out of the house before I am fairly well into it. The
sitting-room expresses Miss Aiken; but not so well, somehow, as the
immaculate bedroom beyond, into which, upon one occasion, I was
permitted to steal a modest glimpse. It was of an incomparable neatness
and order, all hung about--or so it seemed to me--with white starchy
things, and ornamented with bright (but inexpensive) nothings. In this
wonderful bedroom there is a secret and sacred drawer into which, once
in her life, Harriet had a glimpse. It contains the clothes, all gently
folded, exhaling an odour of lavender, in which our friend will appear
when she has closed her eyes to open them no more upon this earth. In
such calm readiness she awaits her time.
Upon the bureau in this sacred apartment stands a small rosewood box,
which is locked, into which no one in our neighbourhood has had so much
as a single peep. I should not dare, of course, to speculate upon its
contents; perhaps an old letter or two, "a ring and a rose," a ribbon
that is more than a ribbon, a picture that is more than art.
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