Henry Jones came back with a start from the rippling little stream beside which he had been lying, and ate his eggs almost sullenly.
Martha was glancing at the newspaper. “I see the shoe factories are in trouble again. That’ll put up your prices at the store.”
“Yes,” said Henry, and went on eating his eggs.
Martha waited a moment. “How’s the new clerk getting on, Hen?” she volunteered again. “Are you going to keep him?”
“Guess so,” said Henry. His inner being shuddered at the nickname his wife used so frequently; but outwardly he felt he was maintaining his composure.
“It must have been that salad last night that upset you,” went on Martha after another interval of silence; to which Henry answered nothing.
All that day at the store Henry’s work revolted him as nothing had ever revolted him before. He longed for freedom. He wanted to wander through dim, cool, mossy woods; or to lie beside babbling brooks upon his back and watch the birds in the trees overhead; or to sit braced against a tree-trunk with a book upon his knee, reading poetry to a pair of blue eyes staring up into his face. Henry had never read much poetry, but he knew now he wanted to.
And she would brush back her straying locks of golden hair and implore him to read more. And then he—
“That hurts my corn,” said Henry Jones’s customer irritably. “Can’t you give me one a little wider at the toe?”
At dinner that evening Henry’s malady was unimproved. He ate very little, seemed disinclined to talk, and equally unable to read his evening newspaper. To Martha’s anxious questions concerning his health Henry guessed his “liver was out of order”—a surmise that the pink and white of his cheeks and the clearness of his little eyes stoutly denied.