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Updated: May 6, 2025
The sun had turned to the west in its majestic course and Tharon, the noon work over, drew up the spindle-legged stool and sat down to play to herself and Anita. The old woman, half Mexic, half Indian, drowsed in a low chair by the eastern window, her toil-hard hands clasped in her lap, a black reboso over her head, though the day was warm as summer.
It was a singular interview, in that old-fashioned colonial room, with the spindle-legged furniture, the silhouettes, the miniatures, the portrait of General Braddock, and the smell of lavender. You see, the two poor maiden ladies were in agonies and they could not say one single thing direct. They would almost wring their hands and ask if I had considered such a thing as different temperaments.
After a while when they want you and your old surveying chains, and spindle-legged tripod telescope kickshaws, farther west, I venture to say the little woman will cry her eyes out won't you, Christie?" This last in a higher tone, as through clouds of tobacco smoke he caught sight of his wife passing the doorway. She entered.
There was a lemon-coloured stuff on the sofa and chairs, a wonderful polish on the floor that was largely exposed, and a copy of a French novel in blue paper on one of the spindle-legged tables. Vanderbank looked about him an instant as if generally struck, then gave himself to something that had particularly caught his eye.
The father sat with his long clay pipe in his mouth, watching his daughter's fair face as she bent over the work upon her knee. The room was neatly kept, but poorly furnished, with that old-fashioned spindle-legged furniture which seems peculiar to lodging-houses. Yet the little sitting-room had an aspect of simple rustic prettiness, which is almost pleasanter to look at than fine furniture.
The particular manner of fixing the hat on the occiput, the triple waistcoat, the vast cravat engulfing the chin, the gaiters, the metal buttons on the greenish coat, all these reminiscences of Imperial fashions were blended with a sort of afterwaft and lingering perfume of the coquetry of the Incroyable with an indescribable finical something in the folds of the garments, a certain air of stiffness and correctness in the demeanor that smacked of the school of David, that recalled Jacob's spindle-legged furniture.
As I stood at the door, the leaping flames, flaring up, sent flitting athwart the floor queer shadows of tall-backed chairs and spindle-legged tables. The great form of my Aunt Gainor filled the old Penn chair I had brought from home, liking myself to use it. Just now, as usual, she was sitting erect, for never did I or any one else see her use for support the back of a chair.
But in spite of his smiling concealment of effort, Daddy had to lean against the fence and catch his breath even while he boasted: "I'm an old codger, sir, but I'm worth a dozen o' you spindle-legged chaps; dum me if I ain't, sir!"
He gripped the back of the spindle-legged chair, and could find no word to say. The stranger it was who spoke. "I presume," he said, with a pleasant smile, in a voice so musical that his hearer breathed suddenly as if his head had been lifted from water, "I presume that you are Mr. Arthur Agar?" While he spoke he looked past Arthur, out of the silken-draped window.
So Aunt Faith went upstairs for her afternoon siesta, and soon fell asleep on the cool chintz lounge, in her shaded room, where the old-fashioned furniture, high bedstead, spindle-legged chairs, and antique toilet-table, had remained unchanged from her youth, when the oval mirror reflected back a merry, rosy girl-face, instead of the pale, silver-haired woman. But Sibyl did not sleep.
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