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Page 10
Her face grew very tender. "I know. James Macauley has told me more than
one tale of hours spent there, when you needed sounder sleep. It's a hard
life, and it's going to be my delight to try to make it easier."
Red Pepper sat up. "It's not a hard life, dear,--it's one of many
compensations. And now that I have one permanent compensation I'm
never going to think I'm being badly used, no matter what goes wrong.
Come, let's stroll about. I want to look at every separate thing. This
piano--surely the sum I gave you didn't cover that? It looks like one of
the sort that are not bought two-for-a-quarter."
"No, Red, that was mine. It came from my old home with Aunt Lucy--that
and the desk-bookcase, and two of the chairs. And Aunt Lucy gave me this
big rug, made from the old drawing-room carpet. I built the whole room on
the rug colourings. You don't mind, do you, dear?--my using these few
things that belonged to me in my girlhood, in South Carolina?"
"In your girlhood? Not--in your Washington life?"
"No, Red."
She looked straight up into his eyes, reading in the sudden glowing of
them under their heavy brows the feeling he could not conceal that he
could bear to have about his house no remote suggestion of her former
marriage.
"All right, dearest," he answered quickly. "I'm a brute, I know,
but--you're mine now. Will you play for me? I believe I'm fond of music."
"Of course you are. But first, let's go upstairs. I'm almost as proud of
our guest-rooms as of this."
"Guest-rooms?" repeated Burns, a few minutes later, when he had examined
everything in the living-room and pronounced all things excellent. "We're
to have guests, are we? But not right away?"
"I thought you'd be eager to entertain those bachelor friends you
mentioned, so I lost no time in getting a second room ready for them."
"Well, I don't know." Burns was mounting the stairs, his arm about his
wife's shoulders. "By the way, Ellen, I don't believe I ever went up
these stairs before. Comfortable, aren't they? I'm glad there's covering
on them. I never like to hear people racketing up and down bare stairs,
be they never so polished and fine. That comes of my instincts for quiet
on my patients' account, I suppose. About the guests--we don't need to
have any for a year or two, do we?"
"Why, Red!" Ellen began to laugh. "I thought you were the most hospitable
man in the world."
"All in good time," agreed her husband, comfortably. He looked in at the
door of the gray-and-rose room, as he spoke. "Well, well!" he ejaculated.
"Well, well!"
And again he was silent, staring. When he spoke:
"Would you mind going over there and sitting down in that willow chair
with the high back?" he requested.
His wife acceded, and crossing the room smiled back at him from the
depths of the white willow chair, her dark head against its cushioning of
soft, mingled tints of pale gray and glowing rose. Red Pepper nodded at
her.
"I thought so," said he. "This is no guest-room. This is your room."
"Oh, no, dear. My place is downstairs, with you--unless--you don't want
me there."
He crossed the room also and stood before her, his hands thrust into his
pockets. "This is your room," he repeated. "It's easy enough to recognize
it. It looks just like you. I've been uncomfortable about you downstairs,
whenever I had to leave you. You'll be safe here, with every window wide
open."
She looked up at him, mutely smiling, but something in her eyes told him
that all was not yet said. Red Pepper leaned still lower and kissed her.
"It will be easy enough to have an extension of the telephone brought up
here," he added--and found her arms about his neck. But she shook her
head. "Don't settle it so quickly," she urged.
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