Horace laughed.  He gazed at a corner-closet with diamond-paned doors.

“That is a perfectly jolly closet, too,” he said; “and those are perfect treasures of old dishes.”

“I think they are rather pretty,” said Henry.  He was conscious of an admiration for the old blue-and-white ware with its graceful shapes and quaint decorations savoring of mystery and the Far East, but he realized that his view was directly opposed to his wife’s.  This time Sylvia spoke quite in earnest.  As far as the Indian china was concerned, she had her convictions.  She was a cheap realist to the bone.

She sniffed.  “I suppose there’s those that likes it,” said she, “but as for me, I can’t see how anybody with eyes in their heads can look twice at old, cloudy, blue stuff like that when they can have nice, clear, white ware, with flowers on it that are flowers, like this Calkin’s soap set.  There ain’t a thing on the china in that closet that’s natural.  Whoever saw a prospect all in blue, the trees and plants, and heathen houses, and the heathen, all blue?  I like things to be natural, myself.”

Horace laughed, and extended his plate for another piece of pie.

“It’s an acquired taste,” he said.

“I never had any time to acquire tastes.  I kept what the Lord gave me,” said Sylvia, but she smiled.  She was delighted because Horace had taken a second piece of pie.

“I didn’t know as you’d relish our fare after living in a Boston hotel all your vacation,” said she.

“People can talk about hotel tables all they want to,” declared Horace.  “Give me home cooking like yours every time.  I haven’t eaten a blessed thing that tasted good since I went away.”

Henry and Sylvia looked lovingly at Horace.  He was a large man, blond, with a thick shock of fair hair, and he wore gray tweeds rather loose for him, which had always distressed Sylvia.  She had often told Henry that it seemed to her if he would wear a nice suit of black broadcloth it would be more in keeping with his position as high-school principal.  He wore a red tie, too, and Sylvia had an inborn conviction that red was not to be worn by fair people, male or female.

However, she loved and admired Horace in spite of these minor drawbacks, and had a fiercely maternal impulse of protection towards him.  She was convinced that every mother in East Westland, with a marriageable daughter, and every daughter, had matrimonial designs upon him; and she considered that none of them were good enough for him.  She did not wish him to marry in any case.  She had suspicions about young women whom he might have met while on his vacation.

After supper, when the dishes had been cleared away, and they sat in the large south room, and Horace had admired that and its furnishings, Sylvia led up to the subject.

“I suppose you know a good many people in Boston,” she remarked.

“Yes,” replied Horace.  “You know, I was born and brought up and educated there, and lived there until my people died.”