“You’ve chosen the only place where you can always be happy, dear,” he said softly.
His head came up with a start. Marjorie drew away from him, to listen sharply.
“Did you hear something?” he asked her, his eyes on the bedroom door.
With finger uplifted for caution, Marjorie Benton tiptoed to the door from behind which had come the disturbing sound, and softly turned the knob. Hugh watched her with eyes of love as she disappeared. But in a moment she was back with him, the door as softly closed behind her.
“It was Elinor,” she told him. “She was sleeping on her back. Something made her cry in her sleep.”
“Dreaming, I suppose—just like her mother!” In his light-hearted relief, Hugh could not refrain from teasing, but Marjorie only laughed.
“Dreaming that Howard had broken her dolly, probably,” she agreed. “Precious baby! I turned her on her side and tucked her in. She’ll sleep till morning. Ready for tea, dear?”
Hugh nodded and slumped with a contented sigh into his seat beside the little table where Marjorie had placed her best chocolate plates and the cups for their tea. Before the stove, Marjorie squinted a moment at her fire. Then she lifted the stove lid and carefully placed a shovelful of coal on the half dying embers. The tea pot was ready with its aromatic herbs. She had seen to that, too. She lifted the kettle of boiling water from where it sang its contented tune on the back of the polished stove.
Then a sudden memory came to her. She turned, uplifted kettle in her hand to the husband who watched her with prideful eyes.
“Oh, Hugh, dear,” she remembered, “on your way to work in the morning, will you stop in at Thompson’s and send me out twelve yards of tennis flannel? I must make some new nighties for the babies. And be sure to send pink; it always washes so much better than blue——”