“I don’t think he’d mind missing the fortune much,” she said. “I wish he could know how many people are riding in his cars, though. He’d like to know about that.”
They passed a “gas-station,” a flamboyantly painted bit of carnival, with an automobile warehouse and salesroom, and then an apartment house built round a begrimed courtyard, for its neighbours; and Harlan sighed. “It’s hard to imagine you and I once lived where these things are, isn’t it?” he said.
“Yes, some of it’s pretty ugly.”
“It’s all ugly. It’s all hideous!” he said.
“No, not all.” And when they had left the avenue behind them, and reached the district of the bungalows and small wooden houses, she showed him gardens that he was forced to admit were “pretty.” But when they got beyond this, to where had been the broad stretches of woodland and meadow that Dan had planned for his “restricted residence district,” she insisted on her husband’s consent to the word “beautiful”; for the woodland was still there, so that one could hardly see the houses; and long hedges of bridal-wreath were flowering everywhere, as if snow had fallen upon the shrubberies.
“Hasn’t beauty come, Harlan?” she said.
“Oh, it’s well enough here,” he grumbled, as they swept into their own deep-shaded driveway.
Then they descended at white stone steps that led them up and out upon a terrace, and there they found the other member of their household sitting placidly—“to enjoy the bridal-wreath,” she said.
“Isn’t it rather chilly for you outdoors, mother?” Harlan asked; for she was now so fragile that she seemed almost transparent. “Don’t you want to go in?”
“No, not just yet,” she said. “I was just sitting here thinking how your father would have enjoyed all this. The town was pleasant when he and I were young, but of course it was never anything like this.”