"In your girlhood? Not—in your Washington life?"
"No, Red."
She looked straight up into his eyes, reading in the sudden glowing of them under their heavy brows the feeling he could not conceal that he could bear to have about his house no remote suggestion of her former marriage.
"All right, dearest," he answered quickly. "I'm a brute, I know, but—you're mine now. Will you play for me? I believe I'm fond of music."
"Of course you are. But first, let's go upstairs. I'm almost as proud of our guest-rooms as of this."
"Guest-rooms?" repeated Burns, a few minutes later, when he had examined everything in the living-room and pronounced all things excellent. "We're to have guests, are we? But not right away?"
"I thought you'd be eager to entertain those bachelor friends you mentioned, so I lost no time in getting a second room ready for them."
"Well, I don't know." Burns was mounting the stairs, his arm about his wife's shoulders. "By the way, Ellen, I don't believe I ever went up these stairs before. Comfortable, aren't they? I'm glad there's covering on them. I never like to hear people racketing up and down bare stairs, be they never so polished and fine. That comes of my instincts for quiet on my patients' account, I suppose. About the guests—we don't need to have any for a year or two, do we?"
"Why, Red!" Ellen began to laugh. "I thought you were the most hospitable man in the world."
"All in good time," agreed her husband, comfortably. He looked in at the door of the gray-and-rose room, as he spoke. "Well, well!" he ejaculated. "Well, well!"