“You look so solemn,” said Dick. “It’s a house, not a church, you know.”
“It feels like a church. I never felt so subdued—and holy—in any church before.”
“Why, Cecily, dear!” Dick did not let her maintain that tone. She was tired and he was afraid she was a little overstrained. He made her laugh, led her on a triumphal tour of the house, gave a graphic description of himself caring for a furnace. She met his gayety with gayety, but underneath the gayety persisted that feeling of responsibility and—holiness. It was like a church, her mind kept persisting.
With the next morning came a bustle that drove those thoughts away. Cecily assumed command of her household and Dick went to his office. The telephone began to ring persistently. The maid appealed to Cecily for decisions about food and the housekeeping machinery. Cecily went about using all her new dignity to its best advantage, and repeating to herself under her breath, “This is mine—my home,” with unfading wonder that it was so. She would pause to look about her in admiration, justified admiration, for the sunlight pouring into the big simple living-room, gleaming on the brasses before the fireplace, bringing out the dull colors of the upholstery, made it a very charming room. The living-room and her bedroom were the rooms she liked best, for they both caught the sunlight more than any other rooms in the house, and her bedroom was peaceful as well as beautiful, most of its color concentrated in the Chinese rug which covered the floor and set off the ivory colored furniture and walls. It was all spacious and exquisitely clean and orderly. Housekeeping instincts crowded to the front of Cecily’s consciousness.
She lunched alone that day, for she and Dick had decided, Dick guiding, that it was better for him not to attempt to come home for lunch and lose two hours in the middle of the day. Cecily had agreed with him, but lunching alone, as she tried it, seemed to her a waste of time. And the hours hanging a little heavy on her hands after that first lonely luncheon, she took out the little coupé which had been her stepfather’s wedding gift to her and manufactured a shopping list.
In one of the shops she met Fliss Horton. Fliss was standing in an attitude of reflection before the blouse counter, pretending to the clerk that she was unable to decide which blouse to choose and actually wondering desperately if her father’s account was too large and too long unpaid to justify the purchase of a twenty dollar blouse, reduced from forty. She was idly speculating on the practical use of the blouse and the possible occasions for wearing it when Cecily stopped beside her.
“I thought,” said Fliss, “that brides didn’t need to buy clothes for years and years, especially brides who have just come from New York.”
“They wouldn’t have to if their trousseaux were a little more practical. I have any number of afternoon clothes and pictorial blouses and traveling things with long sleeves. What I need above all and haven’t is a short-sleeved smock to work in mornings.”
“There again I thought all brides wore trailing negligees until noon.”
They laughed together and felt very well acquainted.