He strolled across the grass beside her to the house, and helped set the table while she was in the kitchen.
He did not smoke his pipe. She had laid it on a high shelf over the mantel as she came in. She had to climb on a chair to reach the mantel. Dick could have reached it with one lift of his hand. But he only eyed it, half-humorously, as he set out doilies and finger-bowls and counted spoons, and called out to the kitchen to know how many forks were needed.
Not for worlds would he have taken down the pipe—not for a single whiff. He had a kind of savage pleasure in it—watching it up there—with its old familiar brown bowl turned to the wall.... Time had been when that pipe was his only friend.... He did not own a house and lot then—and an oak-tree....
He peeped out of the window at the tree, serene in the evening light.... Suddenly he saw a Chinese Coat—blue and gold, she had said it was; and the happiness in his face deepened. He whistled softly between his teeth as he arranged forks and spoons.... “Our forks and spoons!” he said—and laughed out.
She came to the door. “What are you talking about?”
“Nothing—my dear—nothing!” and she returned to the kitchen.
Richard More had not married until he was thirty-five. Eleanor was twenty-six. It had not been easy to win her. She had her tutoring to do.... He took her away from her home town—into his kitchen. But he knew she was happy—far happier than she had been in her little world that looked up to her.... As for himself, he felt as if he moved in a new world—a great world that stretched through leagues—to the moon—or the sun.... The pipe-dreams of old days seemed like hen-coop dreams in the spaces in Eleanor’s mind. Each day he began exploration anew; and each day, in the little circle of her being, he seemed to sweep out into the world—great cosmic paths, and tracks of stars and shining spaces....
She came from the kitchen, smoothing down the sleeves of her gown and casting a last look at the table.
“Too many forks!” she said.
She removed one from each plate, and put it back in its place—neatly in its compartment in the drawer of the shining sideboard.