Then had begun the real work and pleasure of furnishing it. What a never-changing miracle it was to Marjorie to be able to select whatsoever she wished without having to hesitate and consider the price and durability of each article as she had always been obliged to do.
Every detail had been completed a few days before Christmas, when they bade farewell to their friends and the little village with its memories of five happy years, and moved into the new home.
Stretched lazily on Marjorie’s wicker chaise longue, smoking his after-dinner cigar, careless of his tumbling of his wife’s carefully selected new pillows, Hugh Benton let his gaze rove over the vivid scene. It paused as his eyes reached his wife sitting before the cheery fire, her slight smile telling of what she saw in the blazing logs. Because they were so close, so much to each other, Marjorie Benton felt this and as she turned in Hugh’s direction, her smile broadened as her features lighted up with expressed happiness. In a moment she was by his side, kneeling on a cushion in the old familiar child manner her husband knew and loved, and her fingers were running caressingly through his shock of dark hair.
“What do you think of it all, dear?” she asked exultingly. “Isn’t the tree wonderful? I think those decorators were marvelous, but I guess I’m not quite used to money yet, for I almost dread to think of the bill they’ll present.”
Slowly Hugh sat up, and reached for her hand. He patted it gently as he spoke.
“It has all been wonderful, dear,” he answered, “and you mustn’t forget you’re to forget the bills—but honey-girl,” and there was a little droop to the corners of his mouth and unmistakable yearning in his earnest eyes as he voiced his plaint, “somehow I can’t help missing the little old Christmas Eves we always had at Atwood. Remember how you and I would sit up nights ahead stringing popcorn, gilding walnuts, tinseling cotton to represent snow, and doing everything we could to have a pretty, effective tree for the kiddies, without hardly investing anything?”
Marjorie laughed as she gave his hand a playful squeeze. To her it was incomprehensible, with all this grandeur before him, that Hugh should regret the Atwood days.
“How funny, those other little trees were compared with this one, weren’t they?” she wanted to know.
But there was no gleam of answering mirth from Hugh.
“Umm, funny, maybe,” he agreed with an air of reservation. But there was a fuller meaning than Marjorie caught, as he added: “You’re right—one couldn’t possibly compare those other trees with this. Still,” and he was so plaintively appealing that his wife’s clear laughter rang out more bubblingly than ever, “still, we got a lot of happiness out of those funny little trees, didn’t we, dear?”