The Three Black Pennys | Page 8

by a low brick terrace, showed the length of house behind the
dipping, horizontal branches, the beginning, pale gold, of a widespread
beech. It was a long structure of but two stories, built solidly out of a
dark, flinty stone with an indefinite pinkish glow against the lush sod
and sombre, flat greenery of a young English ivy about a narrow, stiff
portico.
Howat crossed the lawn above the house, where a low wing, holding
the kitchen and pantries, extended at right angles from the dwelling's
length. A shed with a flagging of broad stones lay inside the angle,
where a robust girl with an ozenbrigs skirt caught up on bare legs and
feet thrust into wooden clogs was scrubbing a steaming line of iron pots.
He quickly entered the centre hall from a rear door, and mounted, as he
hoped, without interruption to his room. That interior was singularly
restful, pleasant, after the confused and dishevelling night.
The sanded floor, patterned with a broom, held no carpet, nor were the
walls covered, but white and bare save for a number of small, framed
engravings--a view of Boston Harbour, Queene Anne's Tomb, and
some black line satirical portrait prints. A stone fireplace, ready for

lighting, had iron dogs and fender, and a screen lacquered in flowery
wreaths on a slender black stem. At one side stood a hinge-bound chest,
its oak panels glassy with age; on the other, an English set of drawers
held a mirror stand and scattered trifles--razors and gold sleeve-buttons,
a Barcelona handkerchief, candlesticks and flint, a twist of common,
pig-tail tobacco; while from a drawer knob hung a banian of bright
orange Chinese silk with a dark blue cord.
By the side of his curled black walnut bed, without drapery, and set,
like a French couch, low on three pairs of spiral legs, was a deep
cushioned chair into which he sank and dragged off his sodden
buckskin breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary
vision--squat, rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a
table with apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the
floor.... He secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool,
sibilant folds, he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, into an
immediate profound slumber.
The shadows of late afternoon were once more gathering when he woke.
He lay, with hands clasped behind his head, watching a roseate glow
disperse from the room. From without came the faint, clear voice of
Marta Appletofft, across the road at the farm, calling the chickens; and
he could hear the querulous whistling of the partridges that invariably
deserted the fringes of forest to join the domesticated flocks at feed
time. A sense of well-being flooded him; the project of St. Xavier, the
French forts, drew far away; never before had he found Myrtle Forge so
desirable. He was, he thought, growing definitely older. He was
twenty-five.
A light knock fell on his door, and he answered comfortably, thinking
that it was his mother. But it was Caroline, his oldest sister. "How you
have slept," she observed, closing the door at her back; "it was hardly
nine when you came in, and here it is five. Mother heard you." Caroline
Penny was a warm, unbeautiful girl with a fine, slender body, two years
younger than himself. Her colouring was far lighter than Howat's; she
had sympathetic hazel eyes, an inviting mouth, an illusive depression in
one cheek that alone saved her from positive ugliness, and tobacco
brown hair worn low with a long, turned strand. She had on a
pewter-coloured, informal wrap over a black silk petticoat, lacking
hoops, with a cut border of violet and silver brocade; and above low,

green kid stays with coral tulip blossoms worked on the dark velvet of
foliage were glimpses of webby linen and frank, young flesh.
She came to the edge of the bed, where she sat with a yellow morocco
slipper swinging from a silk clocked, narrow foot. He liked Caroline,
Howat lazily thought. Although she did not in the least resemble their
mother in appearance--she could not pretend to such distinction of
being--Caroline unmistakably possessed something of the other's
personality, far more than did Myrtle. She said generally, patently only
delaying for the moment communications of much greater interest than
himself, "Where were you last night?" He told her, and she plunged at
once into a rich store of information.
"Did you know that Mr. and Mrs. Winscombe are staying on? It's so,
because of the fever in the city. David and his father stopped all night,
too, and only left after breakfast. He's insane about London, but I could
see that he's glad to get back to the Province. Mr. Forsythe is very
abrupt, but ridiculously proud of him--"
"These