Unexpected callers were managed by a different method.
If they seated themselves on the sofa, she would fear they did not "set easy"
or "rest comfortable" there, and suggest their moving to the stuffed
chair by the window. The neighbors thought this solicitude merely
another sign of Diadema's "p'ison neatness," excusable in this case
as there was so much white in the new rug.
The fore-room blinds were ordinarily closed, and the chillness
of death pervaded the sacred apartment; but on great occasions,
when the sun was allowed to penetrate the thirty-two tiny panes
of glass in each window, and a blaze was lighted in the fire-place,
Miss Hollis would look in as she went upstairs, and muse
a moment over the pathetic little romance of rags, the story
of two lives worked into a bouquet of old-fashioned posies,
whose gay tints were brought out by a setting of sombre threads.
Existence had gone so quietly in this remote corner of the world that
all its important events, babyhood, childhood, betrothal, marriage,
motherhood, with all their mysteries of love and life and death,
were chronicled in this narrow space not two yards square.
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