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There she sat upon the low fender-stool, the big white apron concealing the blue tweed dress, her pretty, flushed face bent over her work, to all appearances the most industrious of Cinderellas, while the pendulum of the old oak clock clicked noisily to and fro, and through the open door came a whiff of clean cool air, laden with the scent of flowers and sweet-briar, with the pungent aromatic odour of growing herbs, with the heavy sweetness of the dairy.
She lit a cigarette and seated herself on the fender-stool. She has an unconscious knack of getting into easy, loose-limbed attitudes. I said admiringly: "Do you know you're a remarkably well-favoured young person?" And as soon as I said it, I realised what a tremendous factor Betty was in my circumscribed life. What could I do without her sweet intimacy?
"You are looking pale, and ill, my darling," Guy said, rising and throwing himself on the handsome fender-stool at her feet, "I hope you are going to try and regain your former health and spirits very soon." "Oh, yes indeed, I intend to, Guy," she answered sweetly, "I can do that easily, for your sake."
With a charming little air of domesticity she seated herself upon the polished fender-stool at the side of the open grate, catching up her skirt so that it should not be caught by the blaze, and smiling across the room in her most confiding fashion. "Please let me stay, Mrs McNab! It's such a lovely cosy kitchen, and my brother is out, and I feel so lost! Couldn't I do something to help?
He envied Martin Lister the quiet jog-trot happiness of his domestic life; his love for and pride in his children; the calm haven of that comfortable hearth by which he sat to-night, with his slippered feet stretched luxuriously upon a fender-stool of his wife's manufacture, and his daughter sitting on a hassock close to his easy-chair, reading in a book of fairy tales.
I said it was night, so it was, but the heavy curtains were drawn, the gas was lighted, the grate-fire roared up the chimney, the lounge was supplied with its cushions, the fauteuil was drawn up to the fender-stool, the decanter and glass stood on the silver salver and in his velvet slippers and embroidered cap, Henry Rayne smoked the "pipe of peace" before his cheerful fire.
Desperately I cast my eyes round the room for something to bridge the open space, that would bear my weight, if only for a moment. The fender-stool caught my eye; that might do, it was strong, and more than long enough. In an instant we had it across, and I was out of the window and down the front steps. As I turned the handle of the heavy iron gate, I looked down at the front kitchen window.
Agatha was sitting with a smile on her face by a bright fire, knitting in hand. Clare was reading aloud on the opposite side of the fireplace, and Elfie in her favourite position on the low fender-stool, tempting a grey Persian kitten to perform acrobatical antics with Agatha's ball of wool.
She gave him the kiss of one accustomed to kiss him from childhood, and sat down again on the fender-stool. "Now you look more like a Christian gentleman," she laughed. "Confess. It's much more comfortable than your wretched private's uniform." "I'm not quite so sure," he said, somewhat ruefully, indicating his dinner jacket tightly constricted beneath the arms.
The weather changed to fog and damp and she spent the days crouching by the fire, sometimes not stirring a muscle for an hour together. Her favourite seat was the fender-stool in the drawing-room. Her own boudoir downstairs, where she used to receive instruction from the excellent Miss Griggs, she scarcely entered.
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