A concrete sidewalk with a “parking” of grass and mud.  A square smug brown house, rather damp.  A narrow concrete walk up to it.  Sickly yellow leaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds and snags of wool from the cotton-woods.  A screened porch with pillars of thin painted pine surmounted by scrolls and brackets and bumps of jigsawed wood.  No shrubbery to shut off the public gaze.  A lugubrious bay-window to the right of the porch.  Window curtains of starched cheap lace revealing a pink marble table with a conch shell and a Family Bible.

“You’ll find it old-fashioned—­what do you call it?—­Mid-Victorian.  I left it as is, so you could make any changes you felt were necessary.”  Kennicott sounded doubtful for the first time since he had come back to his own.

“It’s a real home!” She was moved by his humility.  She gaily motioned good-by to the Clarks.  He unlocked the door—­he was leaving the choice of a maid to her, and there was no one in the house.  She jiggled while he turned the key, and scampered in. . . .  It was next day before either of them remembered that in their honeymoon camp they had planned that he should carry her over the sill.

In hallway and front parlor she was conscious of dinginess and lugubriousness and airlessness, but she insisted, “I’ll make it all jolly.”  As she followed Kennicott and the bags up to their bedroom she quavered to herself the song of the fat little-gods of the hearth: 

     I have my own home,
     To do what I please with,
     To do what I please with,
     My den for me and my mate and my cubs,
     My own!

She was close in her husband’s arms; she clung to him; whatever of strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run her fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat, seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in the courage and kindness of her man a shelter from the perplexing world.

“Sweet, so sweet,” she whispered.

CHAPTER IV

I

“The Clarks have invited some folks to their house to meet us, tonight,” said Kennicott, as he unpacked his suit-case.

“Oh, that is nice of them!”

“You bet.  I told you you’d like ’em.  Squarest people on earth.  Uh, Carrie——­Would you mind if I sneaked down to the office for an hour, just to see how things are?”

“Why, no.  Of course not.  I know you’re keen to get back to work.”

“Sure you don’t mind?”

“Not a bit.  Out of my way.  Let me unpack.”

But the advocate of freedom in marriage was as much disappointed as a drooping bride at the alacrity with which he took that freedom and escaped to the world of men’s affairs.  She gazed about their bedroom, and its full dismalness crawled over her:  the awkward knuckly L-shape of it; the black walnut bed with apples and spotty pears carved on the headboard; the imitation maple bureau, with pink-daubed scent-bottles and a petticoated pin-cushion on a marble slab uncomfortably like a gravestone; the plain pine washstand and the garlanded water-pitcher and bowl.  The scent was of horsehair and plush and Florida Water.