So secluded was their way of living, and so much had it come to be a habit, that when Lewis announced that he had inherited Uncle Ebenezer’s house his wife hardly looked up from the baby-blanket she was embroidering.
“Uncle Ebenezer’s house in New York?”
He drew a deep breath. “Now I shall be able to show the pictures.”
“Oh, Lewis—” She dropped the blanket. “Are we going to live there?”
“Certainly. But the house is so large that I shall turn the two corner rooms on the ground floor into a gallery. They are very suitably lighted. It was there that Cousin Ebenezer was laid out.”
“Oh, Lewis——”
If anything could have made Lewis Raycie believe in his own strength of will it was his wife’s attitude. Merely to hear that unquestioning murmur of submission was to feel something of his father’s tyrannous strength arise in him; but with the wish to use it more humanely.
“You’ll like that, Treeshy? It’s been dull for you here, I know.”
She flushed up. “Dull? With you, darling? Besides, I like the country. But I shall like Tenth Street too. Only—you said there were repairs?”
He nodded sternly. “I shall borrow money to make them. If necessary—” he lowered his voice—“I shall mortgage the pictures.”