Page:Ballinger Price--Fortune of the Indies.djvu/29

 endless train of thought about her great-grandfather's ship, stole down the hall with a purpose of her own. At the back of the house, partly under the sweeping stairway, was a small room which in the old days had been used as the office. There still stood in a corner the great glass-doored secretary, within whose drawers lay the precious log-books of many an Ingram cruise, and the carnelian seal cut with the image of a ship and the letters "M. I." and a hundred other dusty reminders of a time when momentous business had been carried on in this little white-paneled room. Those white walls were hung with strange, stiff paintings of ships—the Fortune of the Indies herself, the Gloria, the Andromache, Great-grandfather Mark's first ship. It was a still room, even in that quiet house. By day you could look out from its small-paned window to the garden; hollyhocks in summer, and tall foxgloves, and columbine seedlings pushing themselves between the flagging of the path, all shadowed by the oldest elms in Resthaven. The elms were bare now, and the uncut grass yellow and rough, and the dry stalks were black in the flower-beds.