“Don,” she protested, “I––I don’t want to have such a pleasure over with all at once. I want to get it bit by bit.”
There was not much to see, to be sure, but a door and a few windows––a section similar to sections to the right and left of which it was a part. But it was a whole house, a house with lower stories and upper stories and a roof––all his, all hers. To her there was something still unreal about it.
He humored her delay, though Nora was 321 standing impatiently at the door, anxious to see the Pendleton bride. But when she finally did enter, Nora, at the smile she received, had whatever fears might have been hers instantly allayed.
“Gawd bless ye,” she beamed.
Sally refused to remove her wraps until she had made her inspection room by room, sitting down in each until she had grasped every detail. So they went from the first floor to the top floor and came back to the room which he had set apart for their room.
“Does it suit you, wife of mine?” he asked.
With the joy of it all, her eyes filled.
“It’s even more beautiful than I thought it would be,” she trembled.
For him the house had changed the moment she stepped into it. With his father alive, it had been his father’s home rather than his; with his father gone, it had been scarcely more than a convenient resting-place. There had been moments––when he thought of Frances here––that it had taken on more significance, but even this had been due to Sally. When he thought he was making the house ready for another, 322 it had been her dear hand who had guided him. How vividly now he recalled that dinner at the little French restaurant when he had described his home to her––the home which was now her home too. It was at that moment she had first made her personality felt here.
Sally removed her hat and tidied her hair before the mirror in quite as matter-of-fact a fashion as though she had been living here ever since that day instead of only the matter of a few minutes. When she came downstairs, Nora herself seemed to accept her on that basis. To her suggestions, she replied, “Yes, Mrs. Pendleton,” as glibly as though she had been saying it all her life.