"What has changed Sophia so? It isn't Sophia at all! And I thought so much of her, and I looked forward to spending my old age with her so happily!" murmured Julia. "But perhaps it will come right," she reasoned cheerily. "I may get used to it. I didn't suppose there'd be any rubbing of corners. But as there is, the sooner they're rubbed off the better, and we shall settle down into comfort again, at last instead of at first, as I had hoped in the beginning."
Alas! "I really can't stand these plants of yours, Julia, dear," said Mrs. Maybury, soon afterward. "I've tried to. I've said nothing. I've waited, to be very sure. But I never have been able to have plants about me. They act like poison to me. They always make me sneeze so. And you see I'm all stuffed up--"
Her plants! Almost as dear to her as children might have been! The chief ornament of her parlors! And just ready to bloom! This was really asking too much. "I don't believe it's the plants at all," said Julia. "That's sheer nonsense. Anybody living on this green and vegetating earth to be poisoned by plants in a window! I don't suppose they trouble you any more than your lamp all night does me; but I've never said anything about that. I can't bear lamplight at night; I want it perfectly dark, and the light streams out of your room--"
"Because I never shut my door. I want to hear if anything disturbs the house. Why don't you shut yours?"
"I never do, either. I've always had several rooms, and kept the doors open between. It isn't healthy to sleep with closed doors."
"Healthy! Healthy! I don't hear anything else from morning till night when I'm in the house."
"I should think, Sophia Maybury, you wanted to live forever!"
"Goodness knows I don't!" cried Mrs. Maybury, bursting into tears. And that night she shut her bedroom door and opened the window, and sneezed worse than ever all day afterward, in spite of the fact that Mrs. Cairnes had put all her cherished plants into the dining-room alcove.
"I can't imagine what has changed Julia so," sighed Mrs. Maybury. "She used to be so bright and sweet and good-tempered. And now I really don't know what sort of an answer I'm to have to anything I say. It keeps my nerves stretched on the _qui vive_ all day. I am so disappointed. I am sure the Doctor would be very unhappy if he knew how I felt."