Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/244

Rh But you would n't!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, I like living here, of course," she answered simply. "But that's nothing. I want to live where you'll be happiest."

He kissed her. "When you talk like that, you make me perfectly—uxorious!" he declared. "Foolishly fond of my wife—according to the dictionaries. They don't know much; how could anybody be foolishly fond of such a wife!"

He drew her head round under his arm, and with the other hand stroked the soft brown hair and pinched the little ear.

"I do want you to be happy, Stewart," she murmured. "I'm wedded to you—not to a town."

A reluctance to speak fell upon him; in the presence of his wife he found himself suddenly not knowing what to say—not knowing even what his own inclinations were. There was no reason that he could give for not preferring New York or Boston to Avalon. Yet he knew that however more congenial to his tastes these cities might be they could neither of them hold out to him any more happiness.

"Oh, I just like to growl sometimes," he said. "I'm all right; I like the place—and I'm not going to quit beaten. I want to fight it out, and get on top of the whole bunch here, and some time have my own way in things and build up the town."

A manly declaration served to cloak a coward consciousness. His own soul told him that he had slipped back and back, that in the competition of the larger, older cities he could not win a place and must lag behind with the undistinguished. And doing that, he would never be happy. It would be more easy for him to regain what he had lost here in Avalon, where the competition was of men whom he did not fear, than to hew out his niche in New York among men of whom in his secret heart he was afraid.