Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/291

 'Oh, no,' he said in astonishment, 'Mrs. Rice always has it in order.'

Suddenly Lanice felt very homesick. To have seen a necktie on the floor or a picture awry might have made her love the house. She looked at Sears beseechingly.

He laughed and shook his head. 'No, I do not dare to kiss you. If I did I couldn't stop, and I hear "Marmee's" skirts on the stair.'

'But the house is so in order; I would always feel like a guest.'

Ripley went to his bureau, pulled out a drawer, and dumped its contents on the floor, stocks, ties, socks, a tobacco pouch, handkerchiefs, and, far back and forgotten, but tactlessly landing on the top of the heap, a faded, broken fan.

'I am, after all, only second choice,' thought Lanice.

Sears Ripley thought of the yellow room at the end of the hall where many a night his inexplicable friend, Anthony Jones, had slept. He suffered dully, and decided not to show this room to Lanice until a later date.

They went downstairs again, and Louisa and Mrs. Alcott tactfully withdrew to the piazza where they busied themselves darning stockings. It grew cool through the garden and Mary and Ridgewood were led off to the kitchen for bread and milk. Lanice and Sears sat in the library on either end of a sofa, facing each other. He wished to make lists. He felt he had to confide in her the exact number of salt cellars that