"My fountain pen is filled."
"Are you warm enough?"
"Yes."
"You might write your letter by the kitchen fire."
"I shall sit up in bed with a pillow for a desk. I've done it a thousand times, and with the blankets I shall be toasting."
She was standing now at the head of the stairs with a faint light behind her. She wore a pale blue robe—a thing of silky texture and wing-like sleeves.
"It's like having an angel in the house," Aunt Olivia remarked as she rejoined her sister in the kitchen.
"I wonder if she'd like her breakfast upstairs."
"You might ask her."
Aunt Catherine trotted into the narrow hall, and had presently, her glimpse of the angel-visitant shining above her. "Shall we bring your breakfast up to you?"
"Darling . . . of course not. I want to come down. I want to run out in the rain if it is raining. I want to run out in the sun if it is shining. And oh, Aunt Catherine, if we could have hot cakes. . . ."
They would, they planned ecstatically, have sausage with the cakes. They found their own appetites returning. They no longer felt old. "We'll set the table in the dining-room. We might as well begin to have a fire in there, now that Hildegarde's back."
It was amazing to be swept along like this on a tide of anticipation. Whether it rained or shone in the morning, Hildegarde would be going in and out, she would eat with her young girl's appetite. They would hear her lovely laughter.
