How pleasant it was, how bright, and full of pretty feminine devices! whereas his library--Mary had been a hard mistress.

One by one the domestic decorations of the late lady of the house had disappeared.

She could not "have things round a-trapin' dust," Mary said, and her word was law.
"If my little sister had lived," he said, crouching nearer the fire, and watching a spark catch in the soot and spread over the chimney-back like a little marching regiment, that wheeled and maneuvered, and then suddenly vanished, "it would have been different.

She would have made things brighter.

Perhaps she would have painted, like Miss Ruth; and I have no doubt she would have been an excellent housekeeper.