"All right; to-morrow at seven," he said briefly.
He ached in every unaccustomed muscle bent to toil when he strode up the hill at dusk, his day's work over. But he was no more affected by that than a boy on his first day of camping--it was part of the sport. Because he was learning unselfishness he felt more anxiety as to how Elsie had got through the day. Housework in the rather primitive cottage was a different thing from caring for Holly Masterson in his luxurious pink-and-gold nursery. Would he find her discouraged, tired--perhaps cross? He smiled audacious confidence in his ability to caress her into good humor, but he wondered rather uneasily whether his wages would support a maid should Elsie demand one as necessary. He was utterly unused to the practical apportionment of money.
There were new curtains draped across the lighted windows of the little red house. As he turned up the ridiculous plank walk he saw a very diminutive kitten seated on the window-sill inside washing its face. And then he heard a fresh, smooth voice singing the drollest little air he ever had heard in his musical experience--a minor grotesquerie distinctive as the flavor of _bouillabaisse orléanais_. He opened the door and his wife laughed at him across the bright room, flushed with fire heat, dainty in her lavender frock and white ruffled apron, arrested with a steaming tureen uplifted in her little hands.
Perhaps she had doubted how he would come home from that first day of work. For just a moment they drank full reassurance from each other's eyes; then Adriance was across the room.
"Sir, this is a soup extraordinary! Would you overturn your supper?"
"Yes, for this," said Adriance, and kissed her soft mouth.
"Anthony, can one be _too_ happy and affront the fates?"
"We can go on and on, and nothing will happen!"
"Please God!" said Tony Adriance with perfect reverence.
"It is not a wonderful adventure now; it is just life?"
"Of course. I say--I wish that van-driver could see me now--the one I told you about last night."
"The butcher gave me the kitten, Anthony."
"Of course he did; any man would give you all he had. What were you singing when I came in?"
"How should I know? I know a thousand bits of song and a thousand stories, and they march in and out of my head. Our dinner is spoiling, Mr. Adriance."