Nor was Tony Adriance gnawed by vain regrets. According to every rule of romance and reason, he should have suffered from at least brief seasons of repining; at least have been twinged by memories of things foregone, yet desired. But he felt nothing of the kind. Masculine independence was aroused in him, and held reign in riotous good spirits. With a boy's triumphant bravado he faced down cold and hard work, delighting in the victory. He rose early and built Elsie's fires before permitting her to rise, while she sat up protesting in the four-posted bed as he bullied and loved and mastered her. He walked two miles to and from work morning and evening, and drove his big motor-truck eight hours a day. Moreover, he gained weight on the régime, and the springing step of a man in training. He never had suspected it, but his whole body had craved outdoors and employment of its forces; Nature had built him for work, not idleness. The atmosphere in which he had been reared was, by a trick of temperament, foreign to him.
"I'm plain vulgarian," he laughed to his wife one morning as he started to work. "I would rather drive one of my father's trucks and come home to your pork-chops, than I would to dawdle around his house and dine with a strong man standing behind my chair to save me the fatigue of putting sugar in my own coffee. Are you going to have some of those jolly little apple-fritters with butter and cinnamon on them for supper to-night?"
She made a tantalizing face at him. It was two days before Christmas, and so cold that her lips and cheeks were stung poppy-bright as she stood in the doorway.
"Of course not; now I know that you want them. We will have cold meat. What are you going to give me for my stocking, Anthony?"
"A cold-meat fork," he countered promptly. "How did you know I meant to give you anything?"
"I didn't," she calmly told him. "But I am going to give you something, so I thought it only kind to remind you."
He swung himself easily over the railing and smothered her in an embrace made bear-like by his shaggy coat.
"The chauffeur's peerless bride shall not weep," he soothed her. "For ten days her ruby stomacher has been ordered by her devoted husband. Now let your Romeo depart, or his pay will get docked next Saturday."
She lingered in his arms an instant, her shining dark hair pressed against the rough darkness of his cheap fur coat.
"Anthony, don't they ever notice your name, down there? Didn't they ever ask about it?"