“My love, you are an angel!”
This remark clearly indicated an unstable frame of mind, and further reports of the conversation may be cheerfully omitted.
About nine o’clock the young couple started, satchels in hand, to take possession of their new home on the Heights. Mrs. Arburton was charmed. It was just what she wanted, a pretty two-story colonial villa at the end of a broad avenue, and close to the edge of the bluff overlooking the river. The parlor was small, but exquisite, the dining-room cozy, the kitchen perfection.
“Oh, and the view from the chamber window! Isn’t it grand? Why, the house must be on the very edge of the bluff. My love, you have made me perfectly happy. It is such a pretty house, and right in the very best neighborhood.”
The next morning, immediately after breakfast, Mr. Arburton remarked that he would come home to lunch.
“Oh, no, dear. I wouldn’t think of it. It’s too far to come way up here just for lunch. I’ll put up a little basket for you.”
“It will not take me two minutes to run over here from the office. I’ll come home at noon.”
This he said as they stood at the kitchen door.
“What on earth are you talking about—”
She would have said more, but just at that moment her husband opened the back door and stepped out into the dusty road that led to his lumber yard. Mrs. Arburton stood by the door, looking up and down the commonplace road, at the towering piles of lumber across the way, at the tall stacks of a passing steamboat, just visible over the lumber heaps.