Page:Hopkinson Smith--armchair at the inn.djvu/234

 out—and they took me to the church, and it was all over. And then the next month Henri came back from Algiers, where he had been ill in the hospital, and came straight here and sat down in that chair over there, and looked about him, and then he said: “I would not have come home if I had known how things were; I would rather have been shot. I cannot give you all this”—and he pointed to the furniture—“and you did not want them when we first loved each other.”

“‘And then he told me how many times he had written, and we hunted through my father’s chest which I had brought here with me—he had died that year, and so had my dear mother—and there we found all Henri’s letters tied together with a string, and not one of them opened.’

“‘What did you do?’ I asked.

“‘I went at once to my husband and told him everything. He burst into a great rage; and the two had hard words, and then the next day he was out in the field and the sun was very hot, and he was brought home, and has been as you see him ever since.’

“‘And where is Henri?’

“‘He is here on the farm. When the doc-