On the evening of the same Sunday Hal went to pay his promised call upon
Mary Burke. She opened the front door of the cabin to let him in, and
even by the dim rays of the little kerosene lamp, there came to him an
impression of cheerfulness. "Hello," she said--just as she had said it
when he had slid down the mountain into the family wash. He followed her
into the room, and saw that the impression he had got of cheerfulness
came from Mary herself. How bright and fresh she looked! The old blue
calico, which had not been entirely clean, was newly laundered now, and
on the shoulder where the rent had been was a neat patch of unfaded
blue.

There being only three rooms in Mary's home, two of these necessarily
bed-rooms, she entertained her company in the kitchen. The room was
bare, Hal saw--there was not even so much as a clock by way of ornament.
The only charm the girl had been able to give to it, in preparation for
company, was that of cleanness. The board floor had been newly sanded
and scrubbed; the kitchen table also had been scrubbed, and the kettle
on the stove, and the cracked tea-pot and bowls on the shelf. Mary's
little brother and sister were in the room: Jennie, a dark-eyed,
dark-haired little girl, frail, with a sad, rather frightened face; and
Tommie, a round headed youngster, like a thousand other round headed and
freckle-faced boys. Both of them were now sitting very straight in their
chairs, staring at the visitor with a certain resentment, he thought. He
suspected that they had been included in the general scrubbing. Inasmuch
as it had been uncertain just when the visitor would come, they must
have been required to do this every night, and he could imagine family
disturbances, with arguments possibly not altogether complimentary to
Mary's new "feller."

There seemed to be a certain uneasiness in the place.