The nursery
The nursery was a room kept in order in spite of the fact that the child, unfortunately, was dead. Kitty came into it time after time to dry her hair as the windows there were watching south, and it always was full of sunlight on sunny days. And on the day the events started the room was “full of whiteness and clear colors, so unendurably gay and familiar, which is kept in all respects as though there were still a child in the house.” The image of the nursery with no child provokes sad feelings, but its looks manifest that the hope is never to die.
Waiting for the husband
The day when Chris was to arrive home Kitty’s behavior was very anxious and nervous, she “started a savage raid of domestic efficiency, and made the housemaids cry because the brass handles of the tall-boys were not bright enough and because there was only ten-to-one instead of a hundred-to-one risk of breaking a leg on the parquet. When she had tea, and hated the soda-cake, and many other instances of her troubled state of mind occurred till the time she hear the car coming. The image of Kitty shows how really miserable she felt, and there was no relief in seeing Chris, as it was not the Chris she knew and loved.
A dinner of reunion
The first evening when Chris returned the three had a dinner, and the narrator describes it with vivid details: “That night it was a kindly fashion, for we sat about the table with our faces veiled in shadow, and seemed to listen in quiet contentment to the talk of our man who had come back to us”. From time to time Jenny’s eyes were filled with tears as her brother’s behavior resembled the behavior of a twenty-year-old boy, but not as an adult man should behave.
