“I have told you why.”

“You haven’t told me why at all.”

Henry said no more.  He looked out of the window with a miserable expression.  The beautiful front yard, with its box-bordered flower-beds, did not cheer him with the sense of possession.  He heard a bird singing with a flutelike note; he heard bees humming over the flowers, and he longed to hear, instead, the buzz and whir of machines which had become the accompaniment of his song of life.  A terrible isolation and homesickness came over him.  He thought of the humble little house in which he and Sylvia had lived so many years, and a sort of passion of longing for it seized him.  He felt that for the moment he fairly loathed all this comparative splendor with which he was surrounded.

“What do you think she would say if you went back to the shop?” asked Sylvia.  She jerked her head with an upward, sidewise movement towards Rose’s room.

“She may not be contented to live here very long, anyway.  It’s likely that when the summer’s over she’ll begin to think of her fine friends in New York, and want to lead the life she’s been used to again,” said Henry.  “It ain’t likely it would make much difference to her.”

Sylvia looked at Henry as he had never seen her look before.  She spoke with a passion of utterance of which he had never thought her capable.  “She is going to stay right here in her aunt Abrahama’s house, and have all she would have had if there hadn’t been any will,” said she, fiercely.

“You would make her stay if she didn’t want to?” said Henry, gazing at her wonderingly.

“She’s got to want to stay,” said Sylvia, still with the same strange passion.  “There’ll be enough going on; you needn’t worry.  I’m going to have parties for her, if she wants them.  She says she’s been used to playing cards, and you know how we were brought up about cards—­to think they were wicked.  Well, I don’t care if they are wicked.  If she wants them she’s going to have card-parties, and prizes, too, though I ’most know it’s as bad as gambling.  And if she wants to have dancing-parties (she knows how to dance) she’s going to have them, too.  I don’t think there’s six girls in East Westland who know how to dance, but there must be a lot in Alford, and the parlor is big enough for ’most everything.  She shall have every mite as much going on as she would have in New York.  She sha’n’t miss anything.  I’m willing to have some dinners with courses, too, if she wants them, and hire Hannah Simmons’s little sister to wait on the table, with a white cap on her head and a white apron with a bib.  I’m willing Rose shall have everything she wants.  And then, you know, Henry, there’s the church sociables and suppers all winter, and she’ll like to go to them; and they will most likely get up a lecture and concert course.  If she can’t be every mite as lively here in East Westland as in New York, if I set out to have her, I’ll miss my guess.  There’s lots of beautiful dresses up-stairs that belonged to her aunt, and I’m going to have the dressmaker come here and make some over for her.  It’s no use talking, she’s going to stay.”