Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/249

 It seems Uncle Rob knew where he was all the time, and wrote him, before he was sick himself, to leave the money to the family, and by George, he did.

"Lots of the old stuff is there—the sideboard and the library table and grandfather's old desk mother kept the preserves in.

"I used to lie on an old sofa in the dining-room on hot afternoons, waiting for it to get cool, reading some travel book, eating summer apples, and listening to Win and Thea practicing duets in the parlor. Lord, I can hear 'em now! I'd look out at the brick walls, hot, you know, in the sun, and the pear tree, with the nurse rocking Babe under it, and old Annie shelling peas by the kitchen door, and it all seemed so comfortable—"

His eyes were half closed. The children listened dreamily, huddled against him; low red rays crept down from the west-bound sun and struck the little pond to copper, the nickel dishes to silver, the lady's skirt to a peach-colored glory; a little sudden breeze set the red bottle tinkling between the stones. But to the group entranced with memories so vivid that reality blurred before them, the