“There were craftsmen in those days, gentlemen,” he was resuming; “look at this example of their art—­there is quality here and durability——­”

At this point the Great Auctioneer broke in upon my attention and caught up Mr. Harpworth’s words: 

“Yes, quality and durability—­quality and durability.  I also have here to-day, and will offer you, gentlemen, a surpassing antique, not built of wood nor fashioned in brass or iron, but a thing long attached to these acres and this house.  I present for your consideration the married life of John Templeton and Hannah his wife.  They lived together forty years, and the record scarcely shows a dent.  In all that time hardly a word of love passed between them; but never a word of hatred, either.  They had a kind of hard and fast understanding, like the laws of Moses.  He did the work of the fields and she did the work of the house, from sunrise to sunset.  On Sunday they went to church together.  He got out at five o’clock to milk and harness up; and it made double work for her, what with getting the children cleaned, and the milk taken care of, and the Sunday dinner made ready.  But neither he nor she every doubted or complained.  It was the Lord’s way.  She bore him eight children.  She told him before the last one came that she was not equal to it....  After that she was an invalid for seventeen years until she died.  And there was loss of children to bear between them, and sickness, and creeping age, but this bit of furniture held firm to the last.  Gentlemen, it was mad solid, no veneer, a good job all the way through.”

As he spoke I thought that his roving eye (perhaps it was only my own!) fell upon Johnny Holcomb, whose married life has been full of vicissitudes.

“John, take this home with you; you can use it.”

“Nope, no such married life for me,” I thought I could hear him responding, rather pleased than not to be the butt of the auctioneer.

“Do I hear any bids?” the Great Auctioneer was saying, almost in the words of Mr. Harpworth. “What! No one wants n married life like this?  Well, put it aside, Jake.  It isn’t wanted.  Too old-fashioned.”

It was Julia Templeton herself who now appeared with certain of the intimate and precious “bedroom things”—­a wonderful old linen bedspread, wrought upon with woollen figures, and exaling an ancient and exquisite odour of lavender, and a rag rug or so, and a little old rocking chair with chintz coverings in which more than one Templeton mother had rocked her baby to sleep.  Julia herself——­

I saw Julia, that hard-favoured woman, for the first time at that moment, really saw her.  How fiercely she threw down the spread and the rugs!  How bold and unweeping her eyes!  How hard and straight the lines of her mouth!

“Here they are, Mr. Harpworth!”

How shrill her voice; and how quickly she turned back to the noisy kitchen!  I could see the angular form, the streakings of gray in her hair. ...