thought, as he grasped her firm hand: her smooth brown
hair was as thick, her healthy face unlined. When he touched Charlotte
he always felt as if he touched the earth itself. Her hand was the hand
of earth, ready to lead you to wholesome and satisfying things.

"Well," said she, "if I ain't pleased to see you! Jerry, you goin' to
take the trunk in this way?"

Jerry gave her a quick look of inquiry. They had subtle modes of
communication. Charlotte could command him by the flicker of an eyelash
or a modulation of tone, so that Jerry seemed, in the resultant act, to
be following only his own careless or deliberate will.

"Yep," said he, "I'll see to her."

Raven laid hold of it with him and they carried it upstairs to the great
front room looking out to the eastern sky. And Raven was again moved, as
he went, by another surprising discovery: Charlotte had tears in her
eyes. He had at all times a moderate estimate of his own value in the
world, his own appeal to it. Perhaps that was one reason, aside from the
natural sex revulsion, why Anne's exaggerated fostering had roused in
him that wearied perversity. But it was warming to see Charlotte glad
enough to cry over him. When they had set down the trunk and the two had
gone downstairs, he looked about the room and found it good. The walls
were chiefly paneling, all but some expanses of a rich rose and blue
paper; the hangings were of a delicious blue, and a roaring fire was
making great headway. He could guess Charlotte had timed that birch log,
relative to their approach, for the curling bark had not yet blackened
and the fat chuckle of it was still insistent. He laughed a little at
himself. He might have repudiated the scheme of creation and his own
place in it, but he did love things: dear, homespun, familiar things,
potent to eke out man's well-being with their own benevolence and make
him temporarily content in an inhospitable world.

When he went downstairs, the smells from the kitchen were something
overwhelming in their rich pervasiveness. He went directly in where
Charlotte bent at the oven door for a frowning inspection and a
resultant basting.

"Yes," she said, glancing up, "turkey. Terry set him aside, sort of--he
was so well formed and had such nice, pretty ways. Jerry said we'd have
him first time you come. He's always be'n a terrible nice turkey."

Raven had seen his place laid in the dining-room with bravery of damask
and old china.

"I'm not going