As it was, he seemed
kindly, but remote.
"Look out!" said he, "you'll joggle. No, I guess I won't move. If he's
any kind of a man, he'll know what 'tis to clean a clock."
Amelia was not a crying woman, but the hot tears stood in her eyes. She
was experiencing, for the first time, that helpless pang born from the
wounding of pride in what we love.
"Don't you see, Enoch?" she insisted. "This room looks like the Old
Boy--an' so do you--an' he'll go home an' tell all the folks at the
Ridge. Why, he's heard we're married, an' come over here to spy out the
land. He hates the cold. He never stirs till 'way on into June; an' now
he's come to find out."
"Find out what?" inquired Enoch absorbedly. "Well, if you're anyways
put to 't, you send him to me." That manly utterance enunciated from a
"best-room" sofa, by an Enoch clad in his Sunday suit, would have
filled Amelia with rapture; she could have leaned on it as on the
Tables of the Law. But, alas! the scene-setting was meagre, and though
Enoch was very clean, he had no good clothes. He had pointedly refused
to buy them with his wife's money until he should have worked on the
farm to a corresponding amount. She had loved him for it; but every day
his outer poverty hurt her pride.
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