hed with hot
water and rinsed with cold, and scoured inside and out till it shone
like burnished silver. The widow Broadnax, too, was as busy as she ever
was, sitting in her usual place in the chimney-corner, looking like some
large, clumsily graven image in dark stone, and watching her
half-sister's every movement without winking or turning her head. So
that Ruth and David were left to follow their own fanciful devices, free
to put flowers everywhere. They wrought out their fancies to the fullest
and the more fantastic, as the artistic instinct rarely fails to do in
its first freedom. When they were done, the great room of Cedar House
was an oddly charming sight, worth going far to see. Never before had it
been so wonderful, strange, and beautiful. It had now become an
enchanted bower of mingled bloom and fragrance, shadowed within yet open
to the sun-lit day and the flashing river.

"There!" cried Ruth, looking round, with her head on one side. "There
isn't one forgotten spot for another flower. Now, I must run and dress.
And you must wait here till I come back, David, dear, for the doctor may
arrive at any moment, and somebody should be ready to welcome him. Why!
aunt Molly has actually followed aunt Penelope clear to the kitchen, so
that there is no one left but you. Don't go till I come back."

She went up the broad, dark stairs, turning on almost every step to
look down over the room and drink in the beauty and sweetness. David,
also, drank it in still more eagerly, taking deep intoxicating draughts,
as the thirsty take cool, sparkling wine. He then sat quietly looking
about and waiting. His book was in his pocket, as it nearly always was
when not in his hand. But he had grown shy of reading "The Famous
History of Montilion--Knight of the Oracle, Son to the true Mirror of
Princes, the most Renowned Pericles, showing his Strange Birth,
Unfortunate Love, Perilous Adventures in Arms: and how he came to the
Knowledge of his Parents, interlaced with a Variety of Pleasant and
Delightful Discourse," since Ruth had laughed at it, and had laid the
blame for his weakness upon the romance. And then his craving for the
romantic and beautiful was satisfied for the moment by gazing about this
big, strange, shadowy, embowered room. Moreover, Ruth came back very
soon. When beauty is young, fresh, natural, and very, very great, it
does not need much time for its adornment. Ruth's toilet was like a
bird's. A quick dip in pure, col