about the place; soft gray walls, with a trellis of roses at
the top, filmy white draperies with a touch of rose, a gray couch
luxuriously upholstered, with many pillows, some rose, some gray, a
thick, gray rug under her feet, and her own little gray desk drawn out
conveniently when she wanted to write. Over all a flood of autumn
sunshine, and on the wall a great water-color of a marvellous sunset
that Leslie had insisted belonged in that room and must be bought or
the furnishing would not be complete.

It filled Julia Cloud's eyes with tears of wonder and gratitude to
think that such a princess's abode should have come to be her
abiding-place after her long years of barren living in dreary
surroundings. She lifted her eyes to the sunset picture on the wall,
and it reminded her of the evening when she had stood at her own home
window in her distress and sorrow, looking into the gray future, and
had watched it break into rose-color before her eyes. For just an
instant after Leslie had run down-stairs she closed her door, and
dropped upon her knees beside the lovely bed to thank her Lord for
this green and pleasant pasture where He had led her tired feet.

Allison had all the rugs spread out on the porch and lawn, and he and
Leslie were hard at work giving them a good sweeping. They were
wonderful rugs, just such as one would expect to come from a home of
wealth where money had never been a consideration. Julia Cloud looked
at them almost with awe, recognizing by instinct the priceless worth
of them, and almost afraid at the idea of living a common, daily life
on them. For Julia Cloud had read about rugs. She knew that in far
lands poor peasant people, whole families, sometimes wove their
history into them for a mere pittance; and they had come to mean
something almost sacred in her thoughts.

But Allison and Leslie had no such reverence for them; and they swept
away gayly, and slammed them about familiarly, in a happy hurry to get
them in place. So presently the big blue Chinese rug covered the
living-room, almost literally; for it was an immense one, and left
very little margin around it. A handsome Kermanshah in old rose and
old gold with pencillings of black was spread forth under the mahogany
dining-table, and a rich dark-red and black Bokhara runner fitted the
porch-room as if it had been bought for it. The smaller rugs were
quickly disposed here and there, a lovely little rose-colored silk
prayer rug being force