When, after running back, she turned the key in the lock, her heart gave a
leap almost of terror, and she started at the sound of her own footfall.
Through the open door the sunlight streamed into the dark room. She flew to
tables and chairs, and gave a rapid sweep of the hand over their surfaces.
"He has been dusting here,--and within a few days, too," she thought
triumphantly.
The kitchen was perfection, as she always knew it would be, with one door
opening to the shaded road and the other looking on the river; windows, too,
framing the apple-orchard and the elms. She had chosen the furniture, but how
differently it looked now that it was actually in place! The tiny shed had
piles of split wood, with great boxes of kindlings and shavings, all in
readiness for the bride, who would do her own cooking. Who but Stephen would
have made the very wood ready for a woman's home-coming; and why had he done
so much in May, when they were not to be married until August? Then the door
of the bedroom was stealthily opened, and here Rose sat down and cried for joy
and shame and hope and fear. The very flowered paper she had refused as too
expensive! How lovely it looked with the white chamber set! She brought in her
simple wedding outfit of blankets, bed-linen, and counterpanes, and folded
them softly in the closet; and then for the rest of the morning she went from
room to room, doing all that could remain undiscovered, even to laying a fire
in the new kitchen stove.
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