"Kate! Kate!"
"Yes!"
"It's very cold in the house."
She was always cold, even when heat was puffing up through the scroll-work registers.
"Oh no, Aunt Sarah; it's almost like summer to-day."
"I'm very cold."
"All right. I'll fill the oil stove and bring it up to your room."
The studio was Aunt Sarah's room now, crowded with furniture she had saved from Cedarmere. She kept the skylight covered; the curtains were drawn for fear of draughts. So warm, so dark, so over-full; she had gone into it like a burrowing animal into a warm hole full of feathers and dead grass and nutshells. But she wasn't there now. Kate tried the bathroom door, and found it locked. Aunt Sarah laughed soundlessly to herself as the knob turned. She loved the bathroom, not for baths, which she considered weakening, but for quiet and meditation. Here was the one place nobody could get at her to suggest that she do anything she didn't want to.
Oh, bother! Kate thought, putting on her hat. Gloves, purse, my letter to Joe; I'm afraid that's overweight—but I must try to be patient, she's so old. Oh, bother the telephone!
"Hello! . . . No—this is 172, party J. . . . Dear
