"There, my dear," cried the voice of her husband, proudly, "there you are!"
Forgetting twenty pretty speeches, he threw open the door and stood aside with bashful pride to let her pass.
The beam of light entered the vacant dusk like an intruder. Sheila seized all in one swift glance and her lips set dangerously. She remained without motion, while Fargus, mumbling nervously, stole to the parlor window and flung open the shutters. The hall was bare, the parlor had but a table and a cheap lamp in its emptiness. The walls were destitute of ornament, clothed with an invariable dust-green paper.
She went quickly to the dining-room. The furniture was of the scantiest. She counted the chairs, there were just two. The sideboard and the table were of oak, thinly veneered and not fresh. The two gazed silently, Sheila with swelling throat and clouded eyes, Fargus, to whom each purchase had been a plunge into the abyss of ruin, trembling again with the memory of the pangs each had cost him.
"Well," he asked at last, "it's pretty, don't you think?"
"Oh, the house can be made very pretty," she said pensively and, turning to him with a smile, she added gratefully, "and you were real nice to leave me the furnishing of it."
"The—the furnishing!" he stammered, opening his eyes.
"Wait and see what I can do," she cried with a laugh. "Now I'm going up to see the rest."