Then, according to a tender custom, he put his arm about her and drew her to him, and while he thought she slept, she lay there, her eyes closed against his breast, and the hard certainty upon her of something to think about. Blankness had seized upon her, not because he had married a woman before her, but because he had not told. Possibly he had told her mother in some of their desultory talks and had forgotten to say more. The chill wonder of it sprang from her learning it too late. She had to adapt herself to a new man. Until now she had believed that it was spring with them, and that he had waited for her with an involuntary fealty, as she had done for him. They had every guerdon of young love, except that there were not so many years before them. But even that paled beside the triumphant sense that no boy or girl could possibly be as happy as they, with their ripened patience and sense of fun. A phrase came into her mind as she lay there against his heart and knew he was driving slowly to let her rest: "the wife of his youth." It hurt her keenly, and she caught a breath so sharp and sudden that he drew her closer, as one stirs a child to let it fall into an easier pose. That day they stopped at an old-fashioned tavern in a drowsy town, and Lydia, after dinner, where she talked quite gayly about the house and the garden and the farther hills, said she thought she would go upstairs and lie down a spell. Eben looked at her with concern. She was always as ready as he for "poking about" new places. "Ain't you feelin' well?" he asked her. "Oh, yes," said Lydia, "I'm all right. Only I'm kinder sleepy. I guess this air makes me. It's higher up here than 'tis a few miles back." "Yes," said Eben, "we've been kinder climbin' up for some days. Well, you go an' sleep it off. Do you good. I'll have my pipe, an' then I'll mog round an' see 'f I can't work off a few bottles on the unsuspectin' populace." When Eben came home from his successful sales, he found a changeling. His wife was not so different in looks or words as in a subtle something he could not define. She laughed at his jokes, and even, in a gentle way, ventured pleasantries of her own; but a strange languor hung about her. It might have been called patience, an acceptance of a situation rather than her eager cheer in it. "You tired?" he asked her over and over again that day, and she always answered:-- "Mebbe I am, a mite."