It was downright silly to have carried
it about with her. She had lost it somewhere--pulling out her
handkerchief, perhaps. Had Lydia Orr found and brought it back? She
ardently wished she knew; but in the meanwhile--
She tore the picture deliberately across, thereby accomplishing
unhindered what Wesley Elliot had attempted several days before; then
she burned the fragments in the quick spurt of a lighted match....
Lest we forget, indeed!
Chapter XVII
The day after the sewing society Ellen Dix went up to her room, after
hurriedly washing the dinner dishes. It was still hot, but a vague
haze had crept across the brazen sky since morning. Ellen's room
looked out into cool green depths of trees, so that on a cloudy day
it was almost too dark to examine the contents of the closet opposite
its two east windows.
It was a pretty room, freshly papered and painted, as were many rooms
in Brookville since the sale of the old Bolton properties. Nearly
every one had scrimped and saved and gone without so long that the
sudden influx of money into empty pockets had acted like wine in a
hungry stomach. Henry Daggett had thrice replenished his stock of
wall papers; window shades and curtaining by the yard had been in
constant demand for weeks; bright colored chintzes and gay flowered
cretonnes were apparently a prime necessity in many households. As
for paper hangers and painters, few awaited their unhurried
movements. It was easy for anybody with energy and common sense to
wield a paintbrush; and old paper could be scraped off and fresh
strips applied by a simple application of flour paste and the
fundamental laws of physics.
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