It was his first experience with the building 111 trades, and he was innocent enough to believe in schedules and estimates. In less than a fortnight, however, he came home to his wife in a mood which she was quick to detect, no matter how carefully he disguised it.
“Oh, I’m just peevish,” said Henry. “The contractor says it’ll take four weeks instead of three, and cost six thousand instead of forty-five hundred. But there’s no use wearing a long face about it. If I did, I didn’t mean to.”
Anna slipped out of her big apron, and rearranged her hair. “Of course you didn’t. I just knew.”
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “my face feels long enough to fit in a churn. Only I was under the impression that I’d put on a mask of gaiety that was absolutely impenetrable.... Well, what’s happened in the ancestral home today?”
She had burned a steak and both thumbs; there was a leak in the plumbing, and the family overhead had four children and a phonograph. Henry kissed the thumbs, cursed the kitchen range, and forgot his troubles.
“You’re going to ruin your hands,” he said, 112 sympathetically. “Darn it, we can afford a cook, Anna. Come on; be reasonable.”
She shook her head. “Oh! And I meant to tell you the wall-paper’s peeling off in the dining room, and the most awful smell of fried onions keeps coming up the dumb-waiter shaft.”
Henry gathered her into his arms. “Dearest, in a year you can have a dipperful of attar of roses for every fried onion. And we’ll be so rich you can mingle practically on equal terms with the plumber’s wife.... Now let’s go put on the feed-bag. And by the way, I prefer my steak slightly burned––it’s more antiseptic.”
He never suspected that ninety-nine percent of her difficulties were imaginary, and that she had invented them as soon as she saw his face.
A week later, the contractor brought in still another schedule, and another estimate; Henry became Chesterfieldian in his politeness, and wanted to know if a contract were a contract, or merely a piece of light literature. The contractor was apologetic, but wages were going 113 up––materials were high––labour was scarce––transportation was uncertain––shipments were slow––