Free Ransom by Grace Livingston Hill

platter in one hand and a bottle of olives in the other.
    â€œAnd here’s the cocoa,” said Christobel triumphantly. “Now, I wonder if there is any milk? We could use condensed milk, you know.”
    â€œTwo bottles in the ’frigerator!” shouted Randall, going back to search again. He handed her a bottle.
    They rifled the china closet of some of the priceless dishes that Charmian had purchased for her deluxe dinners, and spread their bounty on the kitchen table with the eagerness of children, the man of the house entering into the fun and joking with his children as if he were only an older brother. As they sat down to their impromptu supper, Christobel thought in her heart like a chime of sweet bells,
Oh, I’m so glad Mrs. Romayne isn’t here! I’m so glad we’ve got Father to ourselves!
If only there wasn’t any Mrs. Romayne in the future. Oh, how could she ever stand it to go back to school after this beautiful little time together and think she would be separated from her father again by another woman?
    Later, when they had cleared away the things and gone at last to rest, she crept into her bed with the thought that Mother would have enjoyed seeing them all together again. Oh, if Mother could only come back to them!

Chapter 5
    Q uite early the next morning, Christobel woke up and looked about the unfamiliar room.
    It was not a room where she had ever slept before on any of her former visits to her father’s home. Charmian had always relegated her to one of the smallest guest rooms on the third floor back whenever she had happened to be in that house for a day or two en route to some other parking place. This room was one of the best guest rooms, and her bags had been dumped here on her arrival the day before the funeral. The bed happened to be made up for a weekend guest whose visit was canceled on account of Charmian’s operation.
    Christobel did not feel at home in the room, although she admired the beautiful things in it. It seemed even more like a picture room than the rooms downstairs. There were lovely curtains of delicate lacelike frost, with an inner sheath of palest green taffeta, ruffled elaborately. There was a bedspread of green taffeta to match, and the delicate color was carried out with variations of ivory lace in frills and insets in the covers of the bureau, the lamp shades, the light switches, the cover to the dressing table, and the very upholstery of the dressing table bench. Ivory and green were the fittings of the dressing table, and the private bath beyond showed the colors in tiles and bath towels. Christobel liked it; it seemed so restful. Yet she did not feel at home in it. There was something too fussy about it all. The hairbrush and other toilet articles on the bureau had edges of filigreed gilt, and there were ruffles, ruffles, ruffles, and frills everywhere, and tiny silk rosebuds sprinkled over the lace and silk till it was almost bewildering, and much too ornate.
    To Christobel, contrasting it with the monotony of a boarding school room that had not had the special attention of a loving mother, it seemed rich and beautiful, but not her ideal. She felt like a little cat in a strange garret.
    She lay there a few minutes with her eyes half closed, letting the green shimmer from the lovely curtains fill her gaze with their restful light. There seemed something pleasant about waking up, and she was almost afraid to try to think what it was lest she be disappointed and life would turn out to be the same empty, dull perspective filled with many uninteresting duties that didn’t get one anywhere and went on and on indefinitely.
    It seemed that somehow there was a burden lifted from her, and suddenly it came to her that it was the funeral. That was over. That had been something to dread. That had been something to
greatly
dread. That solemn finish of a life that had never been anything to her but a distress.
    Christobel had not felt enmity