“Factory-people!” exclaimed Mrs. Soule indignantly; but her niece had moved away.
It was several weeks later, when Villard was first able to come downstairs. As soon as possible for him to bear the excitement, the operatives were invited to the house one evening, and permitted to shake hands with the man whom they had always considered their friend, and to whom they had now become closely endeared. The marriage between him and Salome had, somehow, seemed to draw him closer to them. They were now his people as well as hers.
“This isn’t going to take you away from us at the Hall?” said one of the young men during the evening. “Mr. Fales and Mr. Welman are good—but they are not you.”
“I shall be there every evening,” was Villard’s reply. “I am much more anxious not to lose you than you can be not to lose me.”
“I don’t know about that,” the younger one said.
When they had all gone away, and Marion had sent them both upstairs for the night, Salome drew her husband down to her favorite seat in a cosy bay-window, where the August moon was streaming in through vines and foliage, making a checkered radiance around them.
“John,” she began, “I have a plan to tell you.”
“What is it, dear?” he asked, drawing her head to his shoulder.
“I am going to retire from active business.” She laughed softly.
“What can you mean?”