turned toward the porch, every
window was a somber eye of reproach.

He would not have looked so guilty if he had been guilty. He shuffled
into the house like a boy who comes home late from swimming; and when he
called aloud "Pheeny! Oh, Pheeny!" his voice cracked and his throat was
uncertain with phlegm.

He found Pheeny up-stairs in their room, with the door closed. He
closed it after him when he went in. He feigned a care-free joy at the
sight of her, and stumbled over his own foot as he crossed the room and
put his arms about her, where she sat in the big rocking-chair; but she
brushed his arms aside and bent her cheek away from his pursed lips.
This startled him, and he gasped:

"Why, what's the matter, honey? Why don't you kiss me?"

"You don't want to kiss me," she muttered.

"Why don't I?" he exclaimed.

"Because I'm not pirty. I'm not young. I'm not round or tall. I haven't
got nice clothes or those terrible manners that men like in women.
You're tired of me. I don't blame you; but you don't have to kiss me,
and you don't want to."

It was a silly sort of contest for so old a couple; but their souls felt
as young as childhood, or younger, and this debate was all-important. He
caught at her again and tried to drag her head to his lips, pleading
inanely:

"Of course I want to kiss you, honey! Of course I do! Please--please
don't be this way!"

But she evaded him still, and glared at him as from a great distance,
sneering rather at herself than him and using that old byword of
Luella's:

"What can you see in me?" Suddenly she challenged him: "Who do you kiss
when you kiss me?"

He stared at her for a while as if he were not sure who she was. Then he
sat down on the broad arm of her chair and took one of her hands in
his--the hand with the wedding-ring on it--and seemed to talk to the
hand more than to her, lifting the fingers one after another and
studying each digit as though it had a separate personality--as perhaps
it had.

XIV

"Who do I kiss when I kiss you? That's a funny question!"

He laughed solemnly. Then he made a very long speech, for him; and she
listened to it with the attention due to that most fascinating of
themes, the discussion of oneself by another.

"Pheeny, when I was about knee-high to a grasshopper I went over to play
in Tim Holdredge's father's orchard; and when I started for home there
was a big dawg in old Mrs. Pittinger's front yard, and it jumped round
and bark