She had taken off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought had sobered lately to dove-gray, were deep, brilliant blue again.  She was excited with her work, and flushed now with the surprise of Rodney’s coming in.

“How pretty you are going to look here,” said Rodney, glancing about.

The carpet Sylvie had chosen to keep for the parlor—­for though Mrs. Argenter had feebly discussed and ostensibly dictated the list as Sylvie wrote it down, she had really given up all choosing to her with a reiterated, helpless, “As you please,” at every question that came up—­was a small figured Brussels of a soft, shadowy water-gray, with a border in an arabesque pattern.  This had been upon a guest chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and Sylvie’s ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance.  She only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs.

The window draperies were as I have said; there was a large, plain library table in the middle of the room, with books and baskets and little easels with pictures, and paper weights and folders, and other such like small articles of use and grace and cosy expression lying about upon it, as if people had been there quite a while and grown at home.  There were bronze candelabra on the mantel and upon brackets each side the bay window.  Pictures were already hung,—­portraits, and gifts, not included in the schedule,—­a few nice engravings, and one glowing piece of color, by Mrs. Murray, which Sylvie said was like a fire in the room.

“I am only afraid it is too fine,” said she, replying to Rodney.  “I really want to be like our neighbors,—­to be a neighbor.  We belong here now.  People should not drop out of the world, between the ranks, when changes happen; they can’t change out of humanity.  Do you know, Mr. Sherrett,—­if it wasn’t for the thought of my poor father, and my mother not caring about anything any more,—­I know I should enjoy the chance of being a village girl?”

“You’ll be a village girl, I imagine, as your parlor is a village parlor.  All in good faith, but wearing the rue with a difference.”

“I don’t mean to.  I’ve been thinking,—­ever so much, and I’ve found out a good many things.  It’s this not falling on to anything that keeps people in the misery of falling.  I mean to come to land, right here.  I guess I preexisted as a barefoot maiden.  There’s a kind of homeishness about it, that there never was in being elegant.  I wonder if I have got anything in here that has no business?”