The G.o.d of Mammon had showered his favors on these simple souls, but they would never be worshippers of the G.o.d. David, too, had felt the barrier of wealth rising, hard and cruel, between him and the friends of a lifetime, and his heart echoed Sarah's question, "What is life without friends?"

"Well," he said, with an effort at lightness, "if our old friends forsake us, we'll have to make new ones."

"But I don't want new friends!" cried Sarah, with the accent of a fretful child, "Haven't I just told you I couldn't talk to that Mrs.

Emerson?"

A sudden thought seemed to strike David. He took out his watch and glanced at it. "It's time for you to take another dose of the medicine the doctor left. I have to go down-town for a few minutes. You lie still and see if you can't sleep a little."

He handed her the medicine and left the room. Sarah waited till he was out of the house, and then she rose hastily from the bed and began making a hurried toilet.

When David reappeared, he found her fully dressed and the marks of tears gone from her face.

"That medicine's helped you already," he said cheerfully; "and here's a dictionary, and we'll find out what that word means."

The dictionary was an unfamiliar book to David, but after a patient search he found the strange word. "Here it is: civic, of or pertaining to a city, a citizen, or citizenship." He looked hopefully at Sarah. She shook her head rather sadly.

"I don't know a bit more now than I did before, David, but never mind that word. I told you awhile ago that I could stand anything, if we only felt alike about it, and I'm goin' to stand this."

"That's right," said David heartily; "and while you're standing it, I'll be looking for a way out of it. I didn't build this house for you to stand, I built it for you to enjoy, and if you don't enjoy it, you don't have to live in it." At that moment the supper bell rang.

"Come on, honey," said David, holding out his hand to help her from the chair, "you'll feel better after you've had something to eat."

But Sarah only sighed and shook her head languidly. "If I'd only cooked the supper, I might feel hungry. But I just don't care whether I eat or not. I'd rather go hungry than to eat with that Nelly starin' at me."

"You stay up here, Sarah," said David with sudden determination. He wheeled a small table in front of her and hurried from the room. In a few minutes Nelly appeared with a laden tray that she set on the table.

"Mr. Maynor says if there's anything else you want, to let him know."

Nelly's tone and manner were those of the well-trained servant, and she looked at her mistress with a gleam of real sympathy in her eyes.

"This is all I want. I'm much obliged," said Sarah Maynor awkwardly.

Nelly withdrew, and Sarah began to eat, more from grat.i.tude to David than from any sense of hunger. David was so good to her, she must get used to things for his sake. But the relief of eating without the espionage of a servant quickened her appet.i.te, and when David rejoined her, he looked with satisfaction on the empty dishes.

"Don't worry about me, David," said Sarah, with a good attempt at a careless smile. "I've been actin' like a child, but from now on I'm goin' to behave myself." David did not answer. He appeared to be in deep thought about some important matter. He took out a pencil, did some figuring on the back of an envelope, relapsed again into the thoughtful mood, and finally went to bed silent and preoccupied.

For the next few weeks, he was away from home the greater part of the time. Many days he failed to appear at the midday meal, and often it would be dusk before he came to supper. The vague excuse of "business"

satisfied Sarah, for she had the wifely faith that forbade questioning, and though David's sympathy helped her to stand the hard conditions of her daily life, she was still too unhappy to feel any keen curiosity about her husband's comings and goings. But one day David came home wearing an expression of such triumphant satisfaction that it could not be overlooked.

"What's the matter, David?" she asked wistfully. "You look just like you did the day you got your patent."

David laughed joyously. "I feel just as I did the day I got my patent, Sarah: I've got a little business to see to after dinner, but about four o'clock I'll come around with the buggy, and we'll take a long ride.

I've been workin' hard for the last few weeks, and I reckon I'm ent.i.tled to a little holiday."

That horse and phaeton had been the occasion of much comment on the part of the general public. People often smiled to see the rich inventor and his wife in their modest turnout, while men of lesser worth whizzed by in costly machines; only Sarah knew that the shining little phaeton and the gentle mare were the realization of a childish dream.

"I reckon I ought to have bought a car," said David apologetically, as he helped Sarah into the phaeton for their first ride together; "but when I was a little shaver I wanted a pony; every boy does. n.o.body but G.o.d will ever know how much I wanted that pony I never got. And when I grew older, I wanted a horse just as bad as I wanted a pony, and now the time's come when I can have what I want. Some day we can get one of these big machines, but right now this little buggy and this little mare just suit me." And Sarah had acquiesced fully in these views.

"You can't love a big machine, but you can love a horse," she said. And thereafter the horse and phaeton were the only mitigating circ.u.mstances of her new life, for they enabled her to get away, for a few happy, care-free hours, from the two-story brick and the two hateful servants.

She ate her dinner with a better appet.i.te because of the promised ride.

Long before the hour appointed she was dressed and waiting with the impatience of a child, and before they had gone a mile, she had caught David's spirit of happiness, and was looking up into her husband's face with a look her face used to wear before the curse of wealth came upon her.

"Are we going to Millville?" she asked apprehensively.

"No," said David. "We're going in that direction, but we'll stop before we get there." He understood why Sarah would not want to drive through the village; it would seem like flaunting her new wealth in the faces of her old neighbors. David's eyes sparkled, and his mouth kept curving into a smile even though there was no occasion for smiling. Sarah felt that she was on the verge of a pleasant surprise, and her eyes roved here and there searching for the possible stopping-place. There were pretty cottages at intervals along the road, and each one reminded her of her lost home. On they went, around a sharp turn in the road, and suddenly David drew rein in the shade of a huge tulip tree just in front of a little country place. A new paling fence painted gray enclosed the lot; the house was not a new one, but its coat of gray matched the fence, and a fresh green roof crowned its walls. Sarah leaned forward, her eyes alight with wonder.

"Why, Dave, it looks like our old cottage. It's exactly like it, only it's had a new coat of paint. What are we stopping here for? Does anybody live here?"

David was helping her out of the phaeton. His eyes were smiling, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

"It does look considerably like our cottage," he said gravely. "That's why I brought you out here. I thought you might enjoy lookin' at it." He opened the gate, and they walked up the path, Sarah glancing from side to side at the newly planted shrubs and trees.

"Why, Dave, it looks just like our front yard, only everything's new.

There's that little maple tree at the corner of the house, just like our maple tree at home, and all the shrubs I used to have, and planted in exactly the same places. It's right curious how much it's like our old place."

They were on the front porch now. David knocked loudly on the door. That door! Sarah's eyes were scanning it as if it were a written page from which she hoped to learn good tidings. It glistened bravely in its thick coat of white paint, but when one has opened and shut the same door for twenty years, the brush of the painter cannot wholly conceal its familiar features. Surely that was her front door!

"The folks don't seem to be at home," said David, and as he spoke, he took a key from his pocket, unlocked the door, and flung it wide open.

David was no playwright, but he understood how to produce a dramatic situation and bring a scene to a successful climax. The opening of the door disclosed a narrow entry. The floor was covered with an oilcloth somewhat worn, and in front of the door lay a rug of braided rags.

Against the wall stood a very ugly hatrack, and over the door leading into the room on the left was a Bible text worked in faded yarns and framed in dingy gilt. For a moment Sarah stood gazing bewildered at the familiar interior, then she grasped her husband's hand and stepped across the threshold, uttering an inarticulate expression of rapture, while David laughed aloud in pure delight.

"Oh, David! David!" she cried, "it's my own home, my own little home!

What does it mean, David? Am I crazy or dreaming or what?" She was clinging to David's arm, trembling and tearful. David patted her kindly on the hand.

"You're not crazy, honey, and you're wide-awake, too. It means that you've got your old home again, and you needn't ever go back to the two-story brick house in town unless you want to."

"But I thought the house was torn down," insisted Sarah, incredulous of the happy reality.

"So it was," explained David, "but I bought the lumber and had it all put together again. Everything's just like it used to be except the wall paper and paint. They're new."

Oh! the miracle of it! And it was David's love that had wrought the miracle. Sarah tried to speak, tried to tell David all her happiness and grat.i.tude, but the words were so incoherent, broken, and mixed with tears that no one but David could have understood their meaning.

"Kind?" he said, patting her shoulder. "No, there's no particular kindness about this. I've just got Doctor Bourland's prescription filled, that's all. You know he said I had to find out what the trouble was and remove it, and that's what I've tried to do."

Sarah's tears flowed afresh at this proof of David's thoughtfulness.

"Oh, David!" she cried remorsefully. "I thought you didn't care for the things--_our_ things! And it hurt me so!"

"Cheer up, old woman," said David. "Dry your eyes and see if I've got everything here I ought to have. You'll find some clothes in the bureau drawers, enough to last for a few days, anyhow. We're goin' to stay here awhile, till that head of yours quits achin' and your nerves get quieted down."

But Sarah was in the kitchen now, opening drawers, doors, and boxes like a true daughter of Pandora. "Sugar--meal--soda--bacon--salt. How on earth did you manage to think of everything, David?"

"Come out in the garden," urged David. "Pretty outlook, ain't it?" he said, with a gesture toward the west where green meadows and blue hills slumbered in the late afternoon sunshine. "See the new stable and the chicken yard. I'll put up some martin boxes next week, and we'll have pigeons, too. Here's the asparagus bed, and over against the stable we'll have a little hotbed and raise early lettuce. It's too late to do much now, but I've got the walks laid off, and this time next year we'll be sittin' under our own 'vine and fig-tree.'"

Hand in hand, like two children, they wandered over their acre of ground, planning for the flower garden, the vegetable garden, and the tiny orchard and the grape arbor that were to be, till the level rays of the sun warned them of approaching evening. David took out his watch.

"Pretty near supper time," he said. "The fire's laid in the kitchen stove. I wonder if you've forgotten how to cook a meal, Mrs. Maynor?"

Sarah answered with a laugh; and as she walked to the house and entered her kitchen, she looked as Eve might have looked, if, with her womanly tears and sighs, she had bribed the Angel of the Flaming Sword to let her pa.s.s through the gate and stroll for an hour along the paths of her lost Eden. But Sarah's Paradise Regained was the paradise of the worker.

She rolled up her sleeves, tied a gingham ap.r.o.n around her waist, and set about getting supper with the zeal of those who count themselves blest in having to earn the bread they eat.