seat him before the hearth, where she sank down on one knee to pull off his heavy rubber boots. But he waved her aside at this, pulled them off with his own hands, and let her take them to the kitchen and bring back his slippers. By this time a smile had lighted up his hard face. The room was certainly more comfortable and cheerful. Still he was a little worried; was there not in these changes a falling away from the grace of self-abnegation which she had so sedulously practiced?
When supper was served by Jane, in the dull dining-room, Mr. Rylands, had he not been more engaged in these late domestic changes, might have noticed that the Missouri girl waited upon him with a certain commiserating air that was remarkable by its contrast with the frigid ceremonious politeness with which she attended her mistress. It had not escaped Mrs. Rylands, however, who ever since Jack's abrupt departure had noticed this change in the girl's demeanor to herself, and with a woman's intuitive insight of another woman, had fathomed it. The comfortable tete-a-tete with Jack, which Jane had looked forward to, Mrs. Rylands had anticipated herself, and then sent him off! When Joshua thanked his wife for remembering the pepper-sauce, and Mrs. Rylands pathetically admitted her forgetfulness, the head-toss which Jane gave as she left the room was too marked to be overlooked by him. Mrs. Rylands gave a hysterical little laugh. “I am afraid Jane doesn't like my sending away the expressman just after I had also dismissed the stranger whom she had taken a fancy to, and left her without company,” she said unwisely.
Mr. Rylands did not laugh. “I reckon,” he returned slowly, “that Jane must feel kinder lonely; she bears all the burden of our bein' outer the world, without any of our glory in the cause of it.”
Nevertheless, when supper was over, and the pair were seated in the sitting-room before the fire, this episode was forgotten. Mrs. Rylands produced her husband's pipe and tobacco-pouch. He looked around the formal walls and hesitated. He had been in the habit of smoking in the kitchen.
“Why not here?” said Mrs. Rylands, with a sudden little note of decision. “Why should we keep this room only for company that don't come? I call it silly.”
This struck Mr. Rylands as logical. Besides, undoubtedly the fire had mellowed the room. After a puff or two he looked at his wife musingly. “Couldn't you make yourself one of them cigarettys, as they call 'em? Here's the tobacco, and I'll get you the paper.”
“I COULD,” she said tentatively. Then suddenly, “What made you think of it? You never saw ME smoke!”
“No,” said Rylands, “but that lady, your old friend, Miss Clifford, does, and I thought you might be hankering after it.”
“How do you know Tinkie Clifford smokes?” said Mrs. Rylands quickly.
“She lit a cigaretty that day she called.”
“I hate it,” said Mrs. Rylands shortly.
Mr. Rylands nodded approval, and puffed meditatively.
“Josh, have you seen that girl since?”
“No,” said Joshua.
“Nor any other girl like her?”
“No,” said Joshua wonderingly. “You see I only got to know her on your account, Ellen, that she might see you.”
“Well, don't you do it any more! None of 'em! Promise me!” She leaned forward eagerly in her chair.
“But Ellen,”—her husband began gravely.
“I know what you're going to say, but they can't do me any good, and you can't do them any good as you did ME, so there!”
Mr. Rylands was silent, and smiled meditatively.
“Josh!”
“Yes.”
“When you met me that night on the Sacramento boat, and looked at me, did you—did I,” she hesitated—“did you look at me because I had been crying?”
“I thought you were troubled in spirit, and looked so.”
“I suppose I looked worried, of course; I had no time to change or even fix my hair; I had on that green dress, and it NEVER was becoming. And you only spoke to me on account of my awful looks?”
“I saw only your wrestling soul, Ellen, and I thought you needed comfort and help.”
She was silent for a moment, and then, leaning forward, picked up the poker and began to thrust it absently between the bars.
“And if it had been some other girl crying and looking awful, you'd have spoken to her all the same?”
This was a new idea to Mr. Rylands, but with most men logic is supreme. “I suppose I would,” he said slowly.
“And married her?” She rattled the bars of the grate with the poker as if to drown the inevitable reply.
Mr. Rylands loved the woman before him, but it pleased him to think that he loved truth better. “If it had been necessary to her salvation, yes,” he said.
“Not Tinkie?” she said suddenly.
“SHE never would have been in your contrite condition.”
“Much you know! Girls like that can cry as well as laugh, just as they want to. Well! I suppose I DID look horrid.” Nevertheless, she seemed to gain some gratification from her husband's reply, and changed the subject as if fearful of losing that satisfaction by further questioning.
“I tried some of those songs you brought, but I don't think they go well with the harmonium,” she said, pointing to some music on its rack, “except one. Just listen.” She rose, and with the same nervous quickness she had shown before, went to the instrument and began to sing and play. There was a hopeless incongruity between the character of the instrument and the spirit of the song. Mrs. Rylands's voice was rather forced and crudely trained, but Joshua Rylands, sitting there comfortably slippered by the fire and conscious of the sheeted rain against the window, felt it good. Presently he arose, and lounging heavily over to the fair performer, leaned down and imprinted a kiss on the labyrinthine fringes of her hair. At which Mrs. Rylands caught blindly at his hand nearest her, and without lifting her other hand from the keys, or her eyes from the music, said tentatively:—
“You know there's a chorus just here! Why can't you try it with me?”
Mr. Rylands hesitated a moment, then, with a preliminary cough, lifted a voice as crude as hers, but powerful through much camp-meeting exercise, and roared a chorus which was remarkable chiefly for requiring that archness and playfulness in execution which he lacked. As the whole house seemed to dilate with the sound, and the wind outside to withhold its fury, Mr. Rylands felt that physical delight which children feel in personal outcry, and was grateful to his wife for the opportunity. Laying his hand affectionately on her shoulder, he noticed for the first time that she was in a kind of evening-dress, and that her delicate white shoulder shone through the black lace that enveloped it.
For an instant Mr. Rylands was shocked at this unwonted exposure. He had never seen his wife in evening-dress before. It was true they were alone, and in their own sitting-room, but the room was still invested with that formality and publicity which seemed to accent this indiscretion. The simple-minded frontier man's mind went back to Jane, to the hired man, to the expressman, the stranger, all of whom
