It was after supper that John Gore took his knife and cut the cords, and, turning back the sacking, left Barbara and Mrs. Winnie to look at the things together. He left them to it because he was the giver, and because he knew that there were some matters that he could have no hand in. He had told Mrs. Winnie what to say, for Barbara had fallen to like Mrs. Winnie very greatly, and Chris Jennifer’s wife was no less fervent in her eagerness to mother “the little lady.”
John Gore was sitting alone before the kitchen fire when the parlor door opened very softly and a shadow fell athwart the clean red bricks. Barbara was standing there with some ruddy silken stuff held up over her bosom and falling in rich folds to her feet.
He turned in his chair, smitten with the thought of how fair she looked with her swarthy beauty and that ruddy sheen of silk to heighten it. There was just a flash of woman’s vanity in her eyes that moment, a thing new in her since he had come.
“Barbe!”
She came to him, holding the stuff in her two hands, and they could hear Mrs. Winnie singing with purposeful vigor in the parlor.
“John, how good of you! But you must let me—”
“Let you do what, my soul?” And he rose and stood looking at her very dearly.
“Pay you, John.”
“What pride—and nonsense! But that silk is sweet, now, is it not?”
She met his eyes, blushed, and looked down at her own figure. And then, suddenly, she let the silken stuff fall to the floor, put her two hands up over her face, and burst into tears.