Howard put his arm around his wife, and drew her down beside him on the old horsehair sofa. One of the precious red wool tidies slipped to the floor, and lay there unnoticed. Slowly, while Mrs. Gray had been talking, the full depth of her trouble became clear to him, and the words to comfort her rose to his lips.
"They will, Mary," he said; "they will; you wait and see. How could you think for one moment that our children could look down on their mother? It's mighty seldom, let me tell you, that any boy or girl does that, and only with pretty good reason then—never when they've been blessed with one like you. I haven't been able to do what I wanted for ours, but at least I gave them the best thing they possibly could have—a good mother—and with that I don't think the hardships have hurt them much! Have you forgotten—you mustn't think I'm sacrilegious, dear—that the greatest mother we know anything about was just a poor carpenter's wife—and how much her Great Son loved her? Her name was Mary, too—I'm glad we gave Molly that name—she's a good girl—somehow it seems to me it always carries a halo of sacredness with it, even now!—Then, besides—Thomas and Austin are both going to be farmers, and live right here on the old place. Austin's so smart, he may do other things besides, but this will always be his home and Sylvia's. Peter and Edith'll be here, too, and Sally and Ruth aren't more than a stone's-throw off, as you might say. That makes four out of the eight—more than most parents get. The others will come back, fast enough, to visit, with us and them here! And think of the grandchildren coming along! Why, in the next generation, there'll be more kids piling in and out of this living-room than you could lug water and mend socks for if you never turned your hand to another thing! And, thank God, you won't have to do that now—you can just sit back and take solid comfort with them. You had to work so hard when our own children were babies, Mary, that you never could do that. But with Ruth's and Austin's and Sally's—"
He paused, smiling, as he looked into the future. Then he kissed her, almost as shyly as he had first done more than thirty years before.
"Besides," he said, "I'm disappointed if you're lonely here with me, just for a little while, because I'm enjoying it a whole lot. Haven't you ever noticed that when two people that love each other first get married, there's a kind of glow to their happiness, like the glow of a sunrise? It's mighty beautiful and splendid. Then the burden and heat of the day, as the Bible says, comes along. It doesn't mean that they don't care for each other any more. But they're so tired and so pressed and so worried that they don't say much about their feelings, and sometimes they even avoid talking to each other, or quarrel. But when the hard hours are over, and the sun's gone down—not so bright as it was in the morning, maybe, but softer, and spreading its color over the whole sky—the stars come out—and they know the best part of the day's ahead of them still. They can take time then to sit down, and take each other's hands, and thank God for all his blessings, but most of all for the life of a man and a woman together. Austin and Sylvia think they're going to have the best part now, in the little brick cottage. But they're not. They'll be having it thirty years from now, just as you and I are, in the Old Gray Homestead."
Mary Gray wiped her eyes. "Why, Howard," she said, "you used to say you wanted to be a poet, but I never knew till now that you was one! I'd rather you'd ha' said all that to me than—than to have been married to Shakespeare!" she ended with a happy sob, and put her white head down on his shoulder.
CHAPTER XXI
Uncle Mat, whose long-postponed visit was at last taking place, sat talking in front of the fire in Sylvia's living-room with the "new minister." The room was bright with many candles, and early fall flowers from her own garden stood about in clear glass vases. In the dining-room beyond, they could see the two servants moving around the table, laid for supper. A man's voice, whistling, and the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps, came up the footpath from the Homestead. And at the same moment, the door of Sylvia's own room opened and shut and there was the rustle of silk and the scent of roses in the hall.
A moment later she came in, her arm on Austin's. Her neck and arms were bare, as he loved to see them, and her white silk dress, brocaded in tiny pink rosebuds, swept soft and full about her. A single string of great pearls fell over the lace on her breast, and almost down to her waist, and there was a high, jewelled comb in her low-dressed hair. She leaned over her uncle's chair.
"Austin says the others are on their way. Am I all right, do you think,
Uncle Mat?"
"You look to me as if you had stepped out of an old French painting," he said, pinching her rosy cheek; "I'm satisfied with you. But the question arises, is Austin? He's so fussy."