Page:The Blind Bow-Boy (IA blindbowboy00vanv).pdf/38

 left ear. Her hair remained a deep, glossy black, and probably would so remain until the day of her death, unless she stopped sending to Buffalo for certain bottles. Every morning she curled it, parted it in the centre, and tied it in a knot at the back of her head.

She had no taste for the kind of New York social life which was open to her; she was too exclusive and eccentric a person for that. Her friends were few, and those few were all women. Consequently, after the success of the Ninon de Lenclos cloak, she had retired to one of those old Connecticut farmhouses, boarded with oiled but unpainted and now weather-beaten shingles. The rooms were all on different levels, and the ceilings were so low that, in the ascension and descension of the slight flights of stairs between the chambers, tall people, like Harold and Sadi, familiar though they were with the contours of the place, frequently bumped their heads. There were stone fireplaces in this house, wide enough to burn four-foot logs, and provided with ovens and cranes, and Sadi had scoured the surrounding country, attending auction sales and persuading indigent country-folk that they were tired of their chairs and tables, in order to furnish her home appropriately. Ever since Harold could remember, Persia Blaine, an old Negress, had been a constant servitor. Other servants, all women, had come and gone, but Persia was a fixture.