Melody a
woman, a great singer, courted, caressed, living like a queen, with
everything rich and beautiful about her; jewels in her shining hair,
splendid dresses, furs and laces, such as even elderly country women
love to dream about sometimes. She saw this; and she saw something
else besides. The walls of the little room within seemed to part, to
extend; it was no longer a tiny whitewashed closet, but stretched wide
and long, rose lofty and airy. There were couches, wheeled chairs,
great sunny windows, through which one looked out over lovely gardens;
there were pictures, the most beautiful in the world, for those dear
eyes to rest on; banks of flowers, costly ornaments, everything that
luxury could devise or heart desire. And on one of these splendid
couches (oh, she could move as she pleased from one to the other,
instead of lying always in the one narrow white bed!),--on one of them
lay her sister Rejoice, in a lace wrapper, such as Miss Vesta had read
about once in a fashion magazine; all lace, creamy and soft, with
delicate ribbons here and there. There she lay; and yet--was it she?
Miss Vesta tried hard to give life to this image, to make it smile
with her sister's eyes, and speak with her sister's voice; but it had
a strange, shadowy look all the time, and whenever she forced the
likeness of Rejoice into her mind, somehow it came with the old
surroundings, the little white bed, the yellow-washed walls, the old
green flag-bottomed chair on which the medicine-cups always stood.
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