When they reached the house, they sat for a moment by the open window.
"Mother," cried Martine, "I have an idea--I mean a special idea. Wouldn't it be better after this to have tea later, just as it begins to grow dark. Then we needn't miss the sunset."
"Wouldn't that make Angelina's dish-washing come rather late?"
"Oh, listen, listen," cried Martine, with something of her old eagerness. "It is part of my plan to leave the dish-washing until morning. There are only three of us, and so we need not follow old-fashioned housekeeping rules."
"I am not so sure of that," and Mrs. Stratford shook her head as if in doubt. "But we can try the late tea to-morrow, so that we can go up in the meadow behind the house for our sunset. It is a better place for a view than my corner of the garden."
It pleased Martine to hear her mother speak so cheerfully.
"I'll try not to mind the melancholy twilights, and all those strange chirping things and the feeling of being shut off in a corner of the world, if only this place is good for mother."
The later tea hour proved feasible, and Martine at the table with her mother after their little stroll to Sunset Hill forgot the melancholy twilight. Nor had she in their busy first week much time for discontent. The village boy whom Mrs. Stratford engaged to unpack their trunks and boxes was bewildered by their number.
"There are some, Angelina, that are not to be unpacked now, please get him to put them in the unfinished ell room."
"Yes, Miss Martine, I know just which they are, and I'll hurry back to help you hang those pictures."
When all the pictures were hung, when artistic draperies covered some of the ugliest chairs, when pretty sofa cushions softened ugly angles, when books and bric-à-brac were distributed in carelessly homelike fashion, and when a number of really valuable rugs were used to tone down the crudeness of the carpets, Angelina surveyed the result with a pride that could not have been greater if she had been the owner of the cottage.
"There," she cried. "It looks just like a city house, only more so, if anything. Don't you think so, Miss Martine, and I do hope you'll have some callers right away. Why, I almost feel as if I was back at the Belhaven when I look from this Cashmere rug to that Arts and Crafts silver bowl on the mantle-piece. No one can say that we haven't shown perfect taste, can they, Miss Martine?"