wood. No shrubbery to shut off the public gaze. A lugubrious bay-window
to the right of the porch. Window curtains of starched cheap lace
revealing a pink marble table with a conch shell and a Family Bible.

"You'll find it old-fashioned--what do you call it?--Mid-Victorian. I
left it as is, so you could make any changes you felt were necessary."
Kennicott sounded doubtful for the first time since he had come back to
his own.

"It's a real home!" She was moved by his humility. She gaily motioned
good-by to the Clarks. He unlocked the door--he was leaving the choice
of a maid to her, and there was no one in the house. She jiggled while
he turned the key, and scampered in. . . . It was next day before either
of them remembered that in their honeymoon camp they had planned that he
should carry her over the sill.

In hallway and front parlor she was conscious of dinginess and
lugubriousness and airlessness, but she insisted, "I'll make it all
jolly." As she followed Kennicott and the bags up to their bedroom she
quavered to herself the song of the fat little-gods of the hearth:

I have my own home,
To do what I please with,
To do what I please with,
My den for me and my mate and my cubs,
My own!

She was close in her husband's arms; she clung to him; whatever of
strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of
that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run