"Oh, I like that Karl," she whispered. "I like that better than anything you ever said."
She turned then and looked from the window. Across the fields, over near the horizon, she could see a little house. The smoke was curling from the chimney. The autumn twilight had come on and they had lighted the lamp. A bit of home! The tears came to her eyes—tears of tender anticipation. She too was to make a home. And was it not good to think that smoke was coming from many chimneys and many lamps were being lighted? Was it not good to feel that the dear world was full of homes?
To the man this coming back to Chicago, returning to his work after the year and a half he had been away, was charged with a happy significance. As they drew nearer and nearer, an impatience possessed him to begin at once; that desire of the worker to start in immediately. He had worked some over there, had done a few things which were most satisfactory, but he wanted now to settle down to actual work in his old place, 'with his own things. He fell to wondering if they had changed the laboratory, resentful at the possibility.
"Why look here, Ernestine," he suddenly burst forth, turning to her eagerly, "to-morrow's a school day, we're late getting home, everything is in swing—they're waiting for me, and, by Jove, I can just as well as not begin to-morrow!"
A woman who never made one feel things in one's backbone might have resented the quick, eager plunge into work, but Ernestine knew the love of work herself, and her eyes brightened to his spirit.
"But dear me, Karl," after a second's hesitation, "it seems you should take a day or two first."
"Why?" he demanded.
"Well,"—vaguely—"to get rested up."
"Rested up!" He stretched forth his arm and then doubled it back, and they both laughed. "That's a joke—my getting rested up. Why I feel like a fighting cock!"
"And crazy to get to work?"