"And about Grace—?" Ah! that comparison—
"She'll be a good deal closer to you then than she is now. She's half Rawn, I tell you, Charles; and love in a cottage does not suit the Rawn blood to-day!
"But I'll tell you—" his face lightened a bit at the jest—"you can go on with your brotherhood of man ideas over there at the factory. I hope you love them—those brothers who are trying to ruin me and this company! Try them out—associate with them—love them all you can. Compare that life with this, my boy; and when you've done your work, for which you are paid—when you can charge one car at one receiver, and come from that life to this, on the strength of your brains and your own ability, as I have come here myself—why, I say I'll give you a slice of a million dollars! Then you can compare that life with this, and see how you like the two. I've made up my mind already about that! So has Grace."
Halsey turned once more to his wife. She had changed in the last few minutes. Her eye was brighter, her color higher. She was gazing not at her husband nor at her child, but at these rich surroundings.
"I wonder if I could play one of my old pieces on the piano any more now?" she said gaily, rising and walking to the seat of the grand piano which stood across the room from them. "I've been so busy—"
CHAPTER II
ASPARAGUS, ALSO POTATOES
I
What is written is written. Grace moved to Graystone Hall and Halsey remained at the factory cottage; nor did the separation, which was regarded by both as merely temporary after all, afflict either to the extent that both had supposed it would. Grace now became acting mistress of a large and elaborate ménage. As to her husband, his domestic affairs fell into the hands of Mrs. Ann Sullivan, wife of Jim Sullivan, Halsey's most trusted foreman in the factory.
Mrs. Sullivan, blessed with six children of her own, alleged that it would be no trouble whatever to her to take on the sweeping, mending, and all else for an additional household, and to furnish meals for the solitary head thereof; and such was her ability to make proof of all these statements that she in part was to blame for the sad truth that Halsey was not as unhappy as he ought to have been.