Her Faithful Knight — page 38: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

34 The Wanderer’s Return. through the red curtains of the sitting-room window. Those Turkey-red curtains were an idea of hers, to give a homelike warmth and color to the little house when the ‘lamps were lit at night, for Lockhart Cottages had ever been innocent of gas. Miss Knight lifted the latch and entered a small, well-kept garden, in which young ash trees and ivy fought for all sustenance from the ground, and made life a hard struggle for the geraniums, pansies, daisies and forget-me-nots in the tiny flower beds. After carefully drawing the bolt in the gate, Miss Knight slipped her latch-key as noiselessly as possible into the dark-green door of the house. Evidently she was anx- ious not to disturb someone, for she fastened the door with the same care and quiet, and passed softly into a little front sitting room, where, upon a round table by the window, her supper was waiting for her on a snow-white cloth. Bread and butter, watercress, cheese and filtered water formed the simple fare provided; but Miss Knight had a healthy girl’s appetite, and ate her supper thank- fully, while she read through a daily newspaper in the first spare half hour of a busy day. A cottage piano stood in one corner of the room, of which the furniture was cheap and simple in the ex- treme, but not without traces of refined and cultivated tastes of its inmates. Book-shelves of plain deal, neatly bordered by leather and brass nails, abounded, closely packed with well-worn volumes in English, French and German ; poems, novels, educational works, paper-covered plays and several books of reference on art. On a small side table a paint box and sketching block suggested the nature of Miss Knight’s home employment, as did the hand-painted flower panels which beautified the door, and some spirited black-and-white drawings hanging on the walls. The young artist seemed by no means anxious to retire Eomichbooks (S@)