Henry took another mouthful of flapjacks.  “Well, if you can give me any good reason for saying grace you will do more than the parson ever has,” he said.

“Oh, Henry!” said Sylvia.

“It’s the truth,” said Henry.  “I’ve gone to meeting and heard how thankful I ought to be for things I haven’t got, and things I have got that other folks haven’t, and for forgiveness for breaking commandments, when, so far as I can tell, commandments are about the only things I’ve been able to keep without taxes—­till I’m tired of it.”

“Wait till after supper,” repeated the lawyer again, with smiling mystery.  He had a large, smooth face, with gray hair on the sides of his head and none on top.  He had good, placid features, and an easy expression.  He ate two platefuls of the flapjacks, then two pieces of cake, and a large slice of custard pie!  He was very fond of sweets.

After supper was over Henry and Meeks returned to the sitting-room, and sat down beside the two front windows.  It was a small, square room furnished with Sylvia’s chief household treasures.  There was a hair-cloth sofa, which she and Henry had always regarded as an extravagance and had always viewed with awe.  There were two rockers, besides one easy-chair, covered with old-gold plush—­also an extravagance.  There was a really beautiful old mahogany table with carved base, of which neither Henry nor Sylvia thought much.  Sylvia meditated selling enough Calkin’s soap to buy a new one, and stow that away in Mr. Allen’s room.  Mr. Allen professed great admiration for it, to her wonderment.  There was also a fine, old, gold-framed mirror, and some china vases on the mantel-shelf.  Sylvia was rather ashamed of them.  Mrs. Jim Jones had a mirror which she had earned by selling Calkin’s soap, which Sylvia considered much handsomer.  She would have had ambitions in that direction also, but Henry was firm in his resolve not to have the mirror displaced, nor the vases, although Sylvia descanted upon the superior merits of some vases with gilded pedestals which Mrs. Sam Elliot had in her parlor.

Meeks regarded the superb old table with appreciation as he sat in the sitting-room after supper.  “Fine old piece,” he said.

Henry looked at it doubtfully.  It had been in a woodshed of his grandfather’s house, when he was a boy, and he was not as confident about that as he was about the mirror and vases, which had always maintained their parlor estate.

“Sylvia don’t think much of it,” he said.  “She’s crazy to have one of carved oak like one Mrs. Jim Jones has.”

“Carved oak fiddlestick!” said Sidney Meeks.  “It’s a queer thing that so much virtue and real fineness of character can exist in a woman without the slightest trace of taste for art.”

Henry looked resentful.  “Sylvia has taste, as much taste as most women,” he said.  “She simply doesn’t like to see the same old things around all the time, and I don’t know as I blame her.  The world has grown since that table was made, there’s no doubt about that.  It stands to reason furniture has improved, too.”