They were both hesitating whether to remain in the house that night or go home.  Finally they went home.  There was an awe and strangeness over them; besides, they began to wonder if people might not think it odd for them to stay there before the will was read, since they could not be supposed to know it all belonged to them.

It was about two weeks before they were regularly established in the great house, and Horace Allen, the high-school teacher, was expected the next day but one.  Henry had pottered about the place, and attended to some ploughing on the famous White grass-land, which was supposed to produce more hay than any piece of land of its size in the county.  Henry had been fired with ambition to produce more than ever before, but that day his spirit had seemed to fail him.  He sat about gloomily all the afternoon; then he went down for the evening mail, and brought home no letters, but the local paper.  Sylvia was preparing supper in the large, clean kitchen.  She had been looking over her new treasures all day, and she was radiant.  She chattered to her husband like a school-girl.

“Oh, Henry,” said she, “you don’t know what we’ve got!  I never dreamed poor Abrahama had such beautiful things.  I have been up in the garret looking over things, and there’s one chest up there packed with the most elegant clothes.  I never saw such dresses in my life.”

Henry looked at his wife with eyes which loved her face, yet saw it as it was, elderly and plain, with all its youthful bloom faded.

“I don’t suppose there is anything that will suit you to have made over,” he said.  “I suppose they are dresses she had when she was young.”

Sylvia colored.  She tossed her head and threw back her round shoulders.  Feminine vanity dies hard; perhaps it never dies at all.

“I don’t know,” she said, defiantly.  “Three are colors I used to wear.  I have had to wear black of late years, because it was more economical, but you know how much I used to wear pink.  It was real becoming to me.”

Henry continued to regard his wife’s face with perfect love and a perfect cognizance of facts.  “You couldn’t wear it now,” he said.

“I don’t know,” retorted Sylvia.  “I dare say I don’t look now as if I could.  I have been working hard all day, and my hair is all out of crimp.  I ain’t so sure but if I did up my hair nice, and wasn’t all tuckered out, that I couldn’t wear a pink silk dress that’s there if I tone it down with black.”

“I don’t believe you would feel that you could go to meeting dressed in pink silk at your time of life,” said Henry.

“Lots of women older than I be wear bright colors,” retorted Sylvia, “in places where they are dressy.  You don’t know anything about dress, Henry.”

“I suppose I don’t,” replied Henry, indifferently.

“I think that pink silk would be perfectly suitable and real becoming if I crimped my hair and had a black lace bonnet to wear with it.”