“That would be a new sensation,” laughed Stella. “I like new sensations as much as Peter Pan did. Oh, it’s a new sensation having a home like this, and living in the country, and smelling good, cool air and–and having you.”
She was suddenly beside me on the settle. We heard Mrs. Pillig going up to bed. The house was still. Outside the choral song of night insects sounded drowsily. Buster came softly in and plopped down on the rug. We were alone in Twin Fires, together, and she would not rise to go up the road to Bert’s. She would never go! So we sat a long, long while–and the rest shall be silence.
Chapter XVIII
WE BUILD A POOL
It was the strangest, sweetest sensation I had ever known to wake in the morning and hear soft singing in the room where a fresh breeze was wandering. I saw Stella standing at the window, her hair about her shoulders, looking out. She turned when I stirred, came over to kiss me, while her hair fell about my face, and then cried, “Hurry! Hurry! I must get out into the garden!”
Presently, hand in hand, we went over the new lawn to the sundial which stood amid a ring of brilliant blooms–which, however, had become unbelievably choked with weeds in the ten days of my absence. The gnomon was throwing a long shadow westward across the VII. We filled the bird bath, which Peter had neglected. We hurried through the orchard to the brook, to see the flowers blooming there, and there, alas! we found the volume of the stream shrunk to less than half its former size. We ran to the rows of berry vines to see how many had survived, and found the greater part of them sprouting nicely; we went up the slope into the rows of vegetables and inspected them; we rushed to see if all the roses were alive; we went to the barn where Mike had just begun to milk, and sniffed the warm, sweet odour.
“Yes, it’s better for any man to be married,” I heard Mike saying to her, as I moved back toward the door. Then he added something I could not hear, and she came to me with rosy face. “The horrid old man!” She was half laughing to herself.
The goods we had ordered began to arrive after breakfast, Bert bringing them from the freight house in his large wagon. I took the day off, and devoted the morning to laying a stair carpet, probably the hottest job I ever tackled. Thank goodness, the stairs went straight up, without curve or angle! As I worked, small feet pattered by me, up and down, and garments from a big trunk in the lower hall brushed my face as they were being carried past–brushed their faint feminine perfume into my nostrils and made my hammer pause in mid-air. After the carpet was laid, there were a thousand and one other things to do. There were pictures of Stella’s to be hung, and them we put in the hitherto vacant room at the front of the house, next to the dining-room, where Stella’s wall desk was also placed, and a case of her books, and some chairs.
“Now I can work here when you want to create literature in your room, or I can receive my distinguished visitors here when you are busy,” she laughed, setting some ornaments on the mantel. “My, but I’ve got a lot of curtains to make! I never did so much sewing in my life.”
Bureaus were carried upstairs with Mike’s assistance, and the ivory backs of a woman’s toilet articles appeared upon them; open closets showed me rows of women’s garments; glass candlesticks were unpacked and set upon the dining-table, and the new dining-chairs “dressed up” the room remarkably. Everywhere we went Mrs. Pillig followed with dust pan and broom, slicking up behind us. When night came it was still an incomplete house–“Oh, a million things yet to get,” cried Stella, “just one by one, as we can afford it, which will be fun!”–but a house that spoke everywhere of a dainty mistress. Outside, by the woodshed, was a pile of packing-boxes and opened crates and excelsior.