he fancied he heard a short sniff or chuckle--he was not certain
which--from the big man in the dining-room.

His bedroom was a good-sized room; that is, it would have been of good
size if the person who designed it had known what the term "square"
meant. Apparently he did not, and had built the apartment on the
hit-or-miss, higglety-pigglety pattern, with unexpected alcoves cut into
the walls and closets and chimneys built out from them. There were
three windows, a big bed, an old-fashioned bureau, a chest of drawers, a
washstand, and several old-fashioned chairs. Mrs. Snow put the lamp upon
the bureau. She watched him anxiously as he looked about the room.

"Do--do you like it?" she asked.

Albert replied that he guessed he did. Perhaps there was not too much
certainty in his tone. He had never before seen a room like it.

"Oh, I hope you will like it! It was your mother's room, Albert. She
slept here from the time she was seven until--until she went away."

The boy looked about him with a new interest, an odd thrill. His
mother's room. His mother. He could just remember her, but that was all.
The memories were childish and unsatisfactory, but they were memories.
And she had slept there; this had been her room when she was a girl,
before she married, before--long before such a person as Alberto Miguel
Carlos Speranza had been even dreamed of. That was strange, it was queer
to think about. Long before he was born, when she was years younger than
he as he stood there now, she had stood there, had looked from those
windows, had--