The young wife had cleared out all the cupboards; in the kitchen the last new tin had been hung up on the hooks, and shone and sparkled in the bright sunshine as if it were pure silver. In the store-room jars and pots were all full and in order, as she turned the key with a happy smile, and put it into the spick-and-span new key-basket on her arm.
"Come, Frank," she said, after he had been admiring all this splendor, "now we will go through all the rooms again."
"There are not many of them, Gertrude," he laughed.
"Enough for us, Frank; we do not need any more."
And they went through the garden hall, and admired the stately buffet and the hanging-lamp of polished brass, which swung over the great dining-table. They went into the drawing-room, and admired the pictures again which the sun lighted up so beautifully, and then they stopped, looked in each other's eyes and kissed each other.
"It is all just as I like it, Frank," said she, "plain and suitable, but nothing sham, no imitations. I hate pretence--everything ought to be genuine, as real and true as my love and your heart, you dear, good fellow.--Now everything is perfect in the house," she continued, picking up a thread from the carpet. "No one would recognize it; it is the most charming little house for miles around. And it did not cost nearly as much as Jenny's trousseau and wedding-journey."
They were standing in the open hall door, and the young man looked with brightening eyes across the garden to the outbuildings which had exchanged their leaky roofs for new shining blue slates.
"You are right, Gertrude, it is a pretty sight; we will sit here often. And to-morrow they will begin to build the new barns. They must be ready when we harvest the first rye."
"Frank," she asked, mischievously, "do you still think as you did a week after our wedding when we spoke about this for the first time, and you were really childish and absolutely _would_ not take anything of that which is yours by every right human and divine? And you would have let the cows be rained on in their stalls and the farm-servants in their beds."
"Because we love each other, love each other unspeakably."
"The adjective is not necessary," corrected she.