Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/21

 wrought-iron fence, over which lean lilac and syringa bushes. Around it great elms raise lordly boughs—leafless now—and pattern the white walls with their shifting shadows. In this early February twilight the shades were not yet drawn—indeed, blinds are seldom closed at all in Resthaven—and had you been walking up the narrow, brick sidewalk of Chesley Street, you might have seen within the high-ceiled dining-room of the Ingram mansion two old ladies who stood beside the window anxiously looking out. They were very much alike, these old ladies, in their plain gray dresses and soft white fichus. Alike, too, were the slight frowns which troubled their blue eyes. They were watching for their grand-niece, who should long ago have been at home; indeed, the tea-urn had been boiling for the past half hour.

Jane Ingram had forgotten that she should have been at home. The increasingly sharp voice of the February dusk-wind did not serve to remind her of it. In response to its whistling she merely turned up the collar of her rough, blue reefer and squared her elbows again on a pile-head of what still was known