each hoped in his heart that he should never be forced into doing
so. Cyrus had become wedded to the house as a man becomes wedded to a
habit, and since the clinging to a habit was the only form of sentiment
of which he was capable, he shrank more and more from what he felt to be
the almost unbearable wrench of moving. A certain fidelity of purpose,
the quality which had lifted him above the petty provincialism that
crippled James, made the display of wealth as obnoxious to him as the
possession of it was agreeable. As long as he was conscious that he
controlled the industrial future of Dinwiddie, it was a matter of
indifference to him whether people supposed him to be a millionaire or a
pauper. In time he would probably have to change his way of living and
put an end to his life-long practice of saving; but, meanwhile, he was
quite content to go on year after year mending the roof and the chimneys
of the old house into which he had moved the week after his marriage.

Entering the hall, he hung his hat on the walnut hat-rack in the dark
corner behind the door, and followed the worn strip of blue and red
oilcloth which ran up the narrow staircase to the floor above. Where the
staircase bent sharply in the middle, the old-fashioned mahogany
balustrade shone richly in the light of a gas-jet which jutted out on a
brass stem from the wall. Although a window on the upper floor was
opened wide to the sunset, the interior of the house had a close musty
smell, as if it had been shut up, uninhabited, for months. Cyrus had
never noticed the smell, for his senses, which were never acute, had
been rendered even duller than usual by custom.

At the top of the stairs, a coloured washerwoman, accompanied by a
bright mulatto boy, who carried an empty clothes basket on his head,
waited humbly in the shadow for the two men to pass. She was a dark
glistening creature, with ox-like eyes, and the remains of a handsome
figure, now running to fat.

"Howdy, Marster," she murmured under her breath as Cyrus reached her, to
which he responded brusquely, "Howdy, Mandy," while he glanced with
unseeing eyes at the mulatto boy at her side. Then, as he walked rapidly
down the hall, with James at his heels, the woman turned back for a
minute and gazed after him with an expression of animal submission and
acquiescence. So little personal to Cyrus and so free from individual
consciousness was this look, that it seemed less the casual glance from
a serva