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  THE LITTLE ROOM
    AND OTHER STORIES




  [Illustration:
    “You don’t
    s’pose
    she _set_ it
    on fire?”]




  THE LITTLE ROOM
    AND OTHER STORIES

  BY
  MADELINE YALE WYNNE

  [Illustration]

  CHICAGO
  WAY & WILLIAMS
  1895




  COPYRIGHT
  BY WAY AND WILLIAMS
  MDCCCXCV

  _Decorations by the Author_




CONTENTS.


                                   PAGE

  THE LITTLE ROOM                     7

  THE SEQUEL TO THE LITTLE ROOM      41

  MY GHOST OF A CHANCE               77

  IN GRANADA                         91

  THE VOICE                         105

  THE SCARF                         119

    [_Thanks are due to the Editors of “Harper’s Magazine” for
  permission to reprint “The Little Room” from the number for
  August, 1895._]




THE LITTLE ROOM.


‘How would it do for a smoking-room?’

‘Just the very place! only, you know, Roger, you must not think of
smoking in the house. I am almost afraid that having just a plain,
common man around, let alone a smoking man, will upset Aunt Hannah. She
is New England--Vermont New England--boiled down.’

‘You leave Aunt Hannah to me; I’ll find her tender side. I’m going to
ask her about the old sea-captain and the yellow calico.’

‘Not yellow calico--blue chintz.’

‘Well, yellow _shell_ then.’

‘No, no! don’t mix it up so; you won’t know yourself what to expect,
and that’s half the fun.’

‘Now you tell me again exactly what to expect; to tell the truth, I
didn’t half hear about it the other day; I was wool-gathering. It was
something queer that happened when you were a child, wasn’t it?’

‘Something that began to happen long before that, and kept happening,
and may happen again; but I hope not.’

‘What was it?’

‘I wonder if the other people in the car can hear us?’

‘I fancy not; we don’t hear them--not consecutively, at least.’

‘Well, mother was born in Vermont, you know; she was the only child by
a second marriage. Aunt Hannah and Aunt Maria are only half-aunts to
me, you know.’

‘I hope they are half as nice as you are.’

‘Roger, be still; they certainly will hear us.’

‘Well, don’t you want them to know we are married?’

‘Yes, but not just married. There’s all the difference in the world.’

‘You are afraid we look too happy!’

‘No; only I want my happiness all to myself.’

‘Well, the little room?’

‘My aunts brought mother up; they were nearly twenty years older than
she. I might say Hiram and they brought her up. You see, Hiram was
bound out to my grandfather when he was a boy, and when grandfather
died Hiram said he “s’posed he went with the farm, ’long o’ the
critters,” and he has been there ever since. He was my mother’s only
refuge from the decorum of my aunts. They are simply workers. They make
me think of the Maine woman who wanted her epitaph to be: “She was a
_hard_ working woman.”’

‘They must be almost beyond their working-days. How old are they?’

‘Seventy, or thereabouts; but they will die standing; or, at least, on
a Saturday night, after all the house-work is done up. They were rather
strict with mother, and I think she had a lonely childhood. The house
is almost a mile away from any neighbors, and off on top of what they
call Stony Hill. It is bleak enough up there, even in summer.

‘When mamma was about ten years old they sent her to cousins in
Brooklyn, who had children of their own, and knew more about bringing
them up. She staid there till she was married; she didn’t go to Vermont
in all that time, and of course hadn’t seen her sisters, for they never
would leave home for a day. They couldn’t even be induced to go to
Brooklyn to her wedding, so she and father took their wedding trip up
there.’

‘And that’s why we are going up there on our own?’

‘Don’t, Roger; you have no idea how loud you speak.’

‘You never say so except when I am going to say that one little word.’

‘Well, don’t say it, then, or say it very, very quietly.’

‘Well, what was the queer thing?’

‘When they got to the house, mother wanted to