Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/109

 his pipe. When I asked him what was the matter he only growled out that a black cat ran across his path last night and that trouble was bound to follow. I suppose he is reciting spells to himself, to drive off the evil. Certainly there was no use in talking to him."

Elizabeth was looking up at the ruined house, trying to imagine how it had seemed, with lights in the windows, with fires on its deserted hearthstones, with all the warm brightness of home shining through its open doorway. Miss Miranda must have been thinking, with far greater and more painful clearness, of much the same thing.

"I used to believe," she said suddenly in midst of a silence, "when I came home from school and crossed the lawn to that side door, that burned, marred door in the wall that is the only one left, that it opened on the dearest place in the world. The big, black cherry tree that grows beside it used to spread such a cloud of white blossoms every spring! I always thought, when I heard people talk of the narrow gate of Heaven, that it must look just like my little dark door under the blooming cherry tree."

She moved over to sit by Elizabeth at the edge of the pool.

"It is not easy to come home to an empty, silent house that is not really home," she went on. "No