After a while I opened the parlor door and peeked in. They used to
keep it open when Mother was here; but Aunt Jane doesn't use it. I
knew where the electric push button was, though, and I turned on the
light.
It used to be an awful room, and it's worse now, on account of its
shut-up look. Before I got the light on, the chairs and sofas loomed
up like ghosts in their linen covers. And when the light did come on,
I saw that all the old shiver places were there. Not one was missing.
Great-Grandfather Anderson's coffin plate on black velvet, the wax
cross and flowers that had been used at three Anderson funerals, the
hair wreath made of all the hair of seventeen dead Andersons and five
live ones--no, no, I don't mean _all_ the hair, but hair from all
seventeen and five. Nurse Sarah used to tell me about it.
Well, as I said, all the shiver places were there, and I shivered
again as I looked at them; then I crossed over to Mother's old piano,
opened it, and touched the keys. I love to play. There wasn't any
music there, but I don't need music for lots of my pieces. I know them
by heart--only they're all gay and lively, and twinkly-toe dancy.
_Marie_ music. I don't know a one that would be proper for _Mary_ to
play.
But I was just tingling to play _something_, and I remembered that
Father was in the observatory, and Aunt Jane upstairs in the other
part of the house where she couldn't possibly hear.
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