The Happy End

xtended across the face of the dwelling; the middle lower room was his; the chamber designed for his married life was a seldom used dining room; while Ettie and Lucy were above. A numb

he dwelling from the public road; and the flowers more than anything else attracted Hannah's daughter.

the afternoon she would dress her in sheer white with a ribbon in her hair. She spared Lucy many of the details of housework in which the latter

e hers, just as it should have been Hannah's. However, his attitude was never any that might be recognized as that of parenthood. He never grew completely accustomed to he

he elder made no reply and, he knew, did as Lucy wished. This disturbed him. There wasn't a finer woman living than Ettie Stammark, and he didn't purpose to have Lucy impudent to her. Lucy, he decided, was getting a little beyond them. She was quick at her lessons,

he saw that a likeness to Hannah was increasing; not in appearance-though that was not dissimilar-but in the quality that had established Hannah's difference from other girls, the quality for which he ha

yed its difference from their own practical beings and affairs. They could afford to have her in fresh

but when she left once more for Stanwick and school Ettie and Calvin without remar

o Stanwick for the school commencement, and Calvin had been too late to meet the stage. After the refreshing cold water in the bright tin basin by the

he youthful yet mature back toward him. She turned slowly, a hand resting on the table, and Calv

," he w

to have her back-mustn't leave them again. She kissed him, and, his eyes shut, the touch of her lips re-created about him the parlo

the commonplace revealing act of supper. It was as if the eighteen years since Hannah, his Hannah, was a reality were but momentary, the passage of the valley. His love for her w

Constellation by constellation the stars glimmered into being. Hannah, Lucy! They mingled and in his fiber were forever one. He gave himself up to the

in the mirror of the bureau. Yet in reality he wasn't old-forty-something-still, not fifty. He was as hard and nearly