I am
at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.
Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady
is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is
Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same
stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long
ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the
child stops and points at a small, round object in a glass case.
'Wah?' he says.
'That?' said Isabel. 'That is the ball Mr Meredith used to play with
when he was a little boy.'
She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her
lip.
'Hush!' she says. 'We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in
there cornering wheat.'
And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.
IN ALCALA
In Alcala, as in most of New York's apartment houses, the schedule of
prices is like a badly rolled cigarette--thick in the middle and thin
at both ends. The rooms half-way up are expensive; some of them almost
as expensive as if Fashion, instead of being gone for ever, were still
lingering. The top rooms are cheap, the ground-floor rooms cheaper
still.
Cheapest of all was the hall-bedroom. Its furniture was of the
simplest. It consisted of a chair, another chair, a worn carpet, and a
folding-bed.
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