den and let
your mother pick a bunch of roses, and then he hitched up his horse
and buggy and drove us back to the farmer's house. The farmer's wife
cried a little when we told her; she liked your mother. She gave us a
crock of butter and some jam. While your mother packed her little
trunk--it wasn't any bigger than one of your hatboxes--I went out and
stood at the gate. I kept thinking, 'By jingo, I'm a married man! Mr.
and Mrs. Mark Constantine.' And I felt sort of afraid--and almost
ashamed. It frightened me because I knew it was two to feed instead of
one, and I wondered if I'd done wrong to take Hannah away from the
farmer's wife when I was only getting ten dollars a week.

"Well, when she came out of the door she looked as pretty as you'll
look in all your stuff, and she came right up to me and said, game as
a pebble, 'Mark, we're man and wife and we'll never be sorry, will we?
And when you're rich and I'm old we will stay just as loving!' I
didn't feel sorry or frightened any more--not once. Not until you came
and they told me she had gone on. Then I felt mighty sorry--and
frightened. She looked so tired when I saw her then--so tired."

He paused, staring at his sunken gardens as seen from Beatrice's
windows. Some men lazily raked new-cut grass and a peacock preened
itself by the sundial. The glass conservatory showed signs of
activity. The florists were at work for the coming event. Then he
looked at his daughter, who waited with polite restraint until his
reverie was ended.

"I've given you all she would have had," he said, as if in debate with
himself that this was the last rebuttal against possible criticism.

Beatrice glided over beside him; she looked out of the window, too,
and then at her father. Something quite like tears was in his harsh
eyes.

"Daddy," she began with a quick indrawing of her breath, "do you think
she'd have wanted me to have all--all this?"

"Why wouldn't she?" he answered, taking her arm gently. He had always
treated her with a formality amounting almost to awe.

"I don't know--only I sometimes do almost think--would you suspect it?
When I go to the office and watch those queerly dressed women bending
over desks and earning a few dollars a week and having to live on
it--and when I see how they manage to smile in spite of it--and how I
waste and spend--and shed a great many tears--well, I wonder if it is
quite safe to start as Steve and I are starting!" Then she threw her
arms