Up the steep steps of the Joy Street Mall they went, to the house on Mt.
Vernon Street which the Reddings had taken on their return from
Washington nearly three years before. Rose had previously shown Katy the
site of the old family house on Summer Street, where she was born, now
given over wholly to warehouses and shops. Their present residence was
one of those wide old-fashioned brick houses on the crest of the hill,
whose upper windows command the view across to the Boston Highlands; in
the rear was a spacious yard, almost large enough to be called a garden,
walled in with ivies and grapevines, under which were long beds full of
roses and chrysanthemums and marigolds and mignonette.
Rose carried a latch-key in her pocket, which she said had been one of
her wedding-gifts; with this she unlocked the front door and let Katy
into a roomy white-painted hall.
"We will go straight through to the back steps," she said. "Mamma is
sure to be sitting there; she always sits there till the first frost;
she says it makes her think of the country. How different people are! I
don't want to think of the country, but I'm never allowed to forget it
for a moment. Mamma is so fond of those steps and the garden."
There, to be sure, Mrs. Redding was found sitting in a wicker-work
chair under the shade of the grapevines, with a big basket of mending
at her side. It looked so homely and country-like to find a person
thus occupied in the middle of a busy city, that Katy's heart warmed
to her at once.
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