The pink and white children ate their peach sauce in happy silence, with their pretty eyes upon the prospective cake.
"I suppose there must be some bed made up in all that big house," remarked their mother; "but it must be awful lonesome." Of the awful lonesomeness of it truly, this smiling, comfortable young soul had no conception.

At that moment, while they were drinking their tea and talking her over, Jane Field sat bolt-upright in one of the old flag-bottomed chairs in the Maxwell sitting-room.
She had dropped into it when the lawyer closed the door after him, and she never stirred afterward.

She sat there all night.
The oil was low in the lamp which the lawyer had lighted, and left standing on the table between the windows.

She could see distinctly for a while the stately pieces of old furniture standing in their places against the walls.

Just opposite where she sat was one of lustreless old mahogany, extending the width of the wall between two doors, rearing itself upon slender legs, set with multitudinous drawers, and surmounted by a clock.