Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/285

Rh Then turning to Aunt Augusta, she asked simply, as if she were a little child again, "Can't I go to bed now? I'm so tired!"

"Answer me, Reba," insisted the invalid irritably. "You answer me. What made you change your mind?"

"You keep still, Eunice," interrupted Augusta's voice peremptorily. "You leave Reba alone. She don't have to tell us all her affairs. Can't you see she's all tuckered out? I should think you'd have more sense. Of course you can go to bed, Reba. Syringa," she ordered, "you go up and get out that nightgown of mine with the acorn design hamburg yoke, in my bottom drawer, and put clean sheets onto Reba's bed, and take your things into the spare-chamber. That'll be your room hereafter."

"Oh, Augusta!" feebly Syringa expostulated. The spare-chamber! Why, Augusta prized her spare-chamber more than the grand piano, or her sealskin coat. To her the possession of a spare-chamber was proof of gentility. She'd as soon go without a dining-room, she had once said. "Let me move into the 'girl's room," Syringa urged. "I'll be comfortable enough there. There's that register down into the kitchen, you know, right over the kitchen stove."

"You keep still," briefly Augusta silenced Syringa. "I know what I'm about. 'Tisn't your comfort I'm thinking of. Reba's to have her own room, and she is to have it without feeling she's putting an old woman like you, with rheumatism every damp day, into that 'girl's room,' that ain't fit really for even a servant. You go right along and do as I say and no more talk about it."