A band of little children ran
screaming by with a large dog drawing a sleigh; a beggar woman clad in
flimsy rags was mounting the steps of a neighboring house, and that
was all. I shrugged my shoulders and turned away with a smothered
yawn. The piano stood open before me, I threw myself carelessly on the
stool and thrummed languidly on the key-board for a moment or so, but
I was not in the humor to play, and with another yawn I arose, crossed
the hall and passed into my father's library.
He was usually there at this hour, but early that afternoon he had
gone into the country to see a patient, and as he would not be back
until after dinner, I appropriated his sanctum in his stead. A fire
burned in the grate, not a roaring blazing fire, but a pile of
steadily glowing coals, intensely red and hot, that kept the room
comfortable, but threw no shadow on the tinted walls.
I wheeled the light lounge that stood opposite the door towards the
fire, and sank gratefully into it to have a little "think" about the
past, all to myself. I began to distinguish the spires of Notre Dame
Abbey rising clearly out of the glowing embers. Faces that I loved
peeped through its latticed windows, smilingly, and voices that were
like the breath of summer in my ear called to me from its hallowed
portals. I was back among the scenes of my early happiness, the winter
day was flooded with summer warmth and sunshine; the birds twittered
in the fresh green foliage, and the stream murmured placidly on at the
foot of the convent garden.
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