“Yes, he’ll be sure to like it,” assented Henry.

After supper, although Sylvia did not relapse into her taciturn mood, Henry went and sat by himself on the square colonial porch on the west side of the house.  He sat gazing at the sky and the broad acres of grass-land.  Presently he heard feminine voices in the house, and knew that two of the neighbors, Mrs. Jim Jones and Mrs. Sam Elliot, had called to see Sylvia.  He resolved that he would stay where he was until they were gone.  He loved Sylvia, but women in the aggregate disturbed and irritated him; and for him three women were sufficient to constitute an aggregate.

Henry sat on the fine old porch with its symmetrical pillars.  He had an arm-chair which he tilted back against the house wall, and he was exceedingly comfortable.  The air was neither warm nor cold.  There was a clear red in the west and only one rose-tinged cloud the shape of a bird’s wing.  He could hear the sunset calls of birds and the laughter of children.  Once a cow lowed.  A moist sense of growing things, the breath of spring, came into his nostrils.  Henry realized that he was very happy.  He realized for the first time, with peaceful content, not with joy so turbulent that it was painful and rebellious, that he and his wife owned this grand old house and all those fair acres.  He was filled with that great peace of possession which causes a man to feel that he is safe from the ills of life.  Henry felt fenced in and guarded.  Then suddenly the sense of possession upon earth filled his whole soul with the hope of possession after death.  Henry felt, for the first time in his life, as if he had a firm standing-ground for faith.  For the first time he looked at the sunset sky, he listened to the birds and children, he smelled the perfume of the earth, and there was no bitterness in his soul.  He smiled a smile of utter peace which harmonized with it all, and the conviction of endless happiness and a hereafter seemed to expand all his consciousness.

Chapter IV

The dining-room in the White homestead was a large, low room whose southward windows were shaded at this season with a cloud of gold-green young grape leaves.  The paper was a nondescript pattern, a large satin scroll on white.  The room was wainscoted in white, and the panel-work around the great chimney was beautiful.  A Franklin stove with a pattern of grape-vines was built into the chimney under the high mantel.  Sylvia regarded this dubiously.

“I don’t think much of that old-fashioned Franklin stove,” she told Henry.  “Why Abrahama had it left in, after she had her nice furnace, beats me.  Seems to me we had better have it taken out, and have a nice board, covered with paper to match this on the room, put there instead.  There’s a big roll of the paper up garret, and it ain’t faded a mite.”

“Mr. Allen will like it just the way it is,” said Henry, regarding the old stove with a sneaking admiration of which he was ashamed.  It had always seemed to him that Sylvia’s taste must be better than his.  He had always thought vaguely of women as creatures of taste.