a shoe-shop after forty years of housekeeping."

"It ain't the same thing at all," said Sylvia.

"Why not?"

"Because it ain't." Sylvia closed her thin lips conclusively. This,
to her mind, was reasoning which completely blocked all argument.

Henry looked at her hopelessly. "I didn't suppose you would
understand," he said.

"I don't see why you thought so," said Sylvia. "I guess I have a mind
capable of understanding as much as a man. There is no earthly sense
in your going to work in the shop again, with all our money. What
would folks say, and why do you want to do it?"

"I have told you why."

"You haven't told me why at all."

Henry said no more. He looked out of the window with a miserable
expression. The beautiful front yard, with its box-bordered
flower-beds, did not cheer him with the sense of possession. He heard
a bird singing with a flutelike note; he heard bees humming over the
flowers, and he longed to hear, instead, the buzz and whir of
machines which had become the accompaniment of his song of life. A
terrible isolation and homesickness came over him. He thought of the
humble little house in which he and Sylvia had lived so many years,
and a sort of passion of longing for it seized him. He felt that for
the moment he fairly loathed all this comparative splendor with which
he was surrounded.

"What do you think she would say if you went back to the shop?" asked
Sylvia. She jerked her head with an upward, sidewise movement towards
Rose's room.

"She may not be contented to live here very long, anyway. It's likely
that when the summer's over she'll begin to think of her fine friends
in New York, and want to lead the life she's been used to again,"
said Henry. "It ain't likely it would make much difference to her."

Sylvia looked at Henry as he had never seen her look before. She
spoke with a passion of utterance of which he had never thought her
capable. "She is going to stay right here in her aunt Abrahama's
house, and have all she would have had if there hadn't been any
will," said she, fiercely.

"You would make her stay if she didn't want to?" said Henry, gazing
at her wonderingly.

"She's got to want to stay," said Sylvia, still with the same strange
passion. "There'll be enough going on; you needn't worry. I'm going
to have parties for her, if she wants them. She says she's been used
to playing cards, and you know how we were brought up about cards--to
think they were wicked. Well, I