Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/198

 which was the Royle girl's home; and he gazed about the old, changeless rooms and peopled them with the men and women familiar to him since childhood, though some of them had been dead two hundred years.

He made it vivid by imagining himself telling her of them. Gazing at old portraits, faded books and an ancient lamp, commonplaces to him, he found them endowed with poignant interest as he thought of showing them to that eager girl.

Shutting himself in his room, he placed his traveling bag on a table and methodically unpacked it. At a tap upon his door, he knew it was not his mother, who never would disturb him in his room, but was Debbie, the maid-servant, with his hot water.

A modern bathroom with running water, both hot and cold, was a few steps down the hall; but in Calvin's room was the washstand with the old blue and white washbowl and pitcher which had been used for at least seventy years, and no one knew certainly how much longer.

Calvin stepped to the door, thanked Debbie, told her he was very glad to be home, and he took in the tall hot-water pitcher with the pewter cover.

As he poured into the bowl, he imagined explaining to the Royle girl about it; he imagined her amused but interested. Then he thought of her as only interested. When she understood, she would like it, he thought.

But what a fancy for him here! He had left Chicago to leave her; he had come home to be away from her, and here he was showing her, in spirit, about his home.

"Tell me about Chicago and your new cases," his mother bid him, when he rejoined her in the library, where a maple fire snapped on the old stone hearth.

She drew him toward the fireplace and seated herself upon the hooded bench at the right, where he used to sit beside her for their talks when he was a little boy. In