“This little thing?” He picked up the volume from where Marjorie had dropped it on the table. He read the title aloud. “Hmmph! ‘Building Castles!’ Why that should have pleased you, dear,” he remarked, with a grin. “Isn’t that what you’re always doing?”
“No more! No more!” Marjorie shook her head till the blonde curls threatened to loosen their holding pins. “I have all the castle I want right here. Why, just look around this room! Isn’t it wonderful?”
Hugh glanced carelessly about.
“It’s a comfortable enough kitchen,” he remarked casually, “but I don’t see any particular wonders about it.”
“Oh, don’t you?” Marjorie’s nose went up in the air and she sniffed. “Why, just look at this chair!” And she whirled the wicker rocker she had sat in during the evening before him. “It’s a genuine Louis the Fifteenth,” she informed him solemnly. “That mirror,”—her hand swept in a gesture to include it, “yes, I mean the one you use to shave by in the cold weather,—but it’s from the salon of the Empress Josephine, nevertheless. And this table,—” the hand came to rest on the small table on which rested her books and the basket of neglected mending, “—why famous men and women have gathered——”
Hugh swept her to him, ending her explanations with the bear hug his wife always welcomed.
“Little witch!” he teased. “Seeing everything just the way you want it. But tell me, seriously, sweetheart,” and he lifted her face to look closely into her eyes. “I know you’ve been living on the heights for some time through your belief in me. Tell me, have you really decided you don’t want to live in New York?”
His wife snuggled closer to him.
“ ‘The heights!’ ” she repeated. “No, Hugh dear,—I’m willing to let who will live on the hilltops of life. For me, the valley. The only place I wish to live the rest of my life is in the Valley of Content.”
For a long moment—a moment when all misunderstanding was wiped out forever—Hugh Benton held his wife close to him. Then he leaned over and placed a kiss on her bright hair that swept his bosom.