Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/294

 In the end she yielded.

He sat up late that night making his plans. He could come down over week-ends and see after his cows and calves. There was nothing to worry about, until when the cold weather came. And she was to get some warm clothing while she was in town. He'd been paid; he had plenty. There was something magnificent in the way he handed her fifty dollars.

"Warm!" he insisted. "All wool and a yard wide. There's the hell of a long winter coming."

She was strangely uneasy, although on the surface she was acquiescent enough. She moved around, doing her small packing the next day, making her arrangements.

"You know about the damper in the stove, Tom, don't you?"

"Me? I took a course in dampers before you knew there was such a thing."

His cheerfulness was forced, she thought, but his determination held. Only once he weakened, when she was packing the gold brushes and jars from the bureau. He had always had an odd sort of pride in them.

"Little old house is going to be mighty"—he hesitated—"mighty bare," he said.

He seemed to loathe to leave her, stood around awkwardly, got in her way, ate little. Once he said, apropos of nothing at all:

"How'd you like to stay in town all winter?"

"What have you got in your head now?" she asked. "If you're trying to get rid of me!"

"You've never spent a winter out here. You don't know what it means. That little old stove won't keep this place warm. What you ought to do's to dig in like a bear some place. Only you haven't got any fat on you."

But she knew he was only arguing to have her oppose him.

He was very talkative on the way to town, very cheerful when Mrs. Mallory had taken them up and showed them the plain little room.

"It isn't much. But it's warm," she said.