"You are already homesick," he said, banteringly, though the placid expression of Tilly's face belied his words.
"No, I am not," she said, a thoughtful smile capturing her mouth and eyes. "How could I be? John, I'm simply crazy to see that little house. I've always wanted a home of my own, all my own."
He locked his twisting fingers in sheer delight, and the blood of his joy warmed his eager face to tenderness. "There is a surprise ahead of us," he said, chuckling. "I say surprise, for Sam thinks I don't know it. He has stocked the pantry full of supplies as our wedding-present. I got on to it by accident. I happened to see one of the bills. Old Sam doesn't do things by halves. Do you know, he is the best man I ever knew?"
A newsboy passed through the car, selling magazines and candies. John bought two flashy periodicals and a box of fresh caramels and put them into Tilly's lap. With a smile she began to look at the pictures. Some of the leaves were uncut and he took out his big workman's knife and clumsily slit them apart. She opened the box of candy, daintily pressed back the lacelike paper covering, and proffered some to him. He shook his head. "I never eat it," he said, and then in brooding confusion he remembered that he had not thanked her.
"I'll never do that kind of thing—never!" he said to himself, in reckless disgust. "All that tomfoolery is for Joel Eperson and his sort. I am of a different breed of dogs."
However, his discomfiture was soon dispelled. The rapid rush of the train through the mountain woodland seemed to brush it away as a thing unworthy of his vast surging happiness. He adored the lashes of Tilly's eyes, which seemed to thwart his efforts to probe the eyes themselves; the sweet curve of her lips; the hair which fell so gracefully over her smooth white brow; the tiny brown freckles on her cheeks; the little feet in the somewhat plain new shoes that shyly peeped out from beneath the new gray skirt. A colored porter brought in some soft pillows, and John secured one and placed it behind Tilly's head.
"There," he said, gently enough, "lean back on it. I'll bet you are fagged out, after all you've done since you got up this morning."
"You mustn't make a baby of me," she mildly protested. "Remember I'm a farmer's daughter who never has been petted."
"It is time you were coddled up a little, then," he answered, fervently. "Somehow you look like a child to me, and a lonely one, too, going off like this with a big no-account hulk of a man whom you have known only a little while."
Tilly beamed at this. It was the quality she loved most in her husband. She had a new purse and card-case combined in her lap, and he opened it, finding only a few dimes and quarters in its immaculate interior.