The room where the breakfast-table was set was the same that I had
entered first, on my arrival at Wallencamp. It was low and small, but
capable, as I learned afterward, of holding any amount of things and
people without ever seeming crowded. There was a cooking-stove in it, and
many other articles of modest worth, so artlessly scattered about as to
present a scene of the wildest and richest profusion.
Art was not entirely wanting, however. There was a ray of it on the wall
behind the stove-pipe, the companion-piece to "Bereavement," entitled
"Joy," and represented my heroine of the bed-chamber, reclining on a
rustic bench in rather an unflounced and melancholy condition. In one
place there hung a yellow family register, which was kept faithfully
supplied from week to week with a wreath of fresh evergreens. It was
headed by a woodcut representing a funeral, Grandma Keeler said; but
Grandpa Keeler afterwards informed me, aside, with much solemnity, that
it was a "marriage ceremony." Near the foot of the list of births,
marriages and deaths, I saw "Casindana Keeler; died, aged twenty."
We sat down at the table. There was a brief altercation between Dinslow
and Grace, the little Keelers, in which impromptu missiles, such as
spoons and knives and small tin-cups, were hurled across the table with
unguided wrath, and both infants yelled furiously.
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