“Oh, I don’t mind noise,” he laughed. “Fact is, I wish you’d sing. I’ll bet you can sing like a bird. Your voice sings even when you’re talking. And any woman—” a delicate compliment that—“can work better when she’s singing.” And so Sally sang. She sang Sunday School songs, because it was Sunday. It was sweet to be alone in the kitchen, with David so near, his crisp, golden-brown head bent over his book, smoke spiraling lazily from his pipe. The old grandmother, looking very tiny and old-fashioned in rustling black taffeta, had gone to church, too, leading her middle-aged half-wit son by the hand. Benny had strained at his mother’s hand, trying to get loose so that he could kiss Sally and show her his bright red necktie, at which the fingers of his free hand plucked excitedly. As she remembered those vacant, grinning eyes, that slack, grinning mouth, Sally’s song changed to a heart-felt paean of thanksgiving: “Count your blessings! Name them one by one. Count your many blessings— See what God hath done!” Oh, she _was_ blessed! She had a good mind; sometimes she was pretty; she could dance and sing; children liked her—and David, David! Poor half-wit Benny, whose only blessings were a dim little old mother and a new red necktie! But wasn’t a mother—even an old, old mother, whose own eyes were vague, such a big blessing that she made up for nearly everything else that God could give? But she resolutely banished the ache in her heart—an ache that contracted it sharply every time she thought of the mother she had never known—and began to sing again: “I think when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children as lambs to His fold—” The opening and closing of the door startled her. David was there, smiling at her. “Won’t you sing ‘Always’ for me, Sally? It’s a new song, just out. It goes something like this—” And he began to hum, breaking into words now and then: “I’ll be loving you—always! Not for just an hour, not for just a day, not—” “So this is why you wouldn’t go to church with me!” a shrill voice, passionate with anger, broke into the singing lesson. They had not heard her, in their absorption in the song and in each other, but Pearl had come into the house through the front door, and was confronting them now in the doorway between dining room and kitchen. “I thought you two were up to something!” she cried. “It’s a good thing I came home when I did, or I reckon there wouldn’t be any Sunday dinner. Do you know why I came home, Sally Ford?” she demanded, advancing into the kitchen, her hands on her hips, her fingers digging spasmodically into the flesh that bulged under the silk. “No,” Sally gasped, retreating until she was halted by the kitchen table. “I’m cooking dinner, Pearl. It’ll be ready on time—”