"She's not quite a year older than Joe," Mrs. Newbolt corrected him, with some asperity, "and she's one of the kind that'll keep. Well, I was married myself, and had a baby, when I was nineteen. But that's no sign." "Joe'll build, I reckon, before then?" guessed Sol. "No; Alice don't want him to. She wants to come here a bride, to this house, like I come to it long, long ago. We'll fix up and make ready for her, little by little, as we go along. It'll be bringin' back the pleasure of the old days, it'll be like livin' my courtship and marriage over. This was a fine house in the days that Peter brought me here, for Peter, he had money then, and he put the best there was goin' into it." "It looks better than any house around here now, since you fixed it up and painted it," said Sol. "It's better inside than outside," said she, with a woman's pride in a home, which justifies her warmth for it. "We had it all plastered and varnished. The doors and casin's and all the trimmin's are walnut, worth their weight in gold, now, almost, Judge Maxwell says." "Yes, the curly walnut's all gone, years and years ago," said Sol. "It passed away with the pioneers," sighed she. "I suppose they'll build in time, though?" Sol said. "I 'low they will, maybe, after I'm gone," said she. "Well, well!" said Sol. He sat silent a little while. "Folks never have got over wonderin' on the way she took up with Joe," he said. Mrs. Newbolt flashed up in a breath. "Why should anybody wonder, I'd like for you to tell me?" she demanded. "Joe he's good enough for her, and too good for anybody else in this county! Who else was there for Joe, who else was there for Alice?" Sol did not attempt to answer. It was beyond him, the way some people figgered, he thought in the back of his mind. There was his own girl, Tilda Bell. He considered her the equal to any Newbolt that ever straddled a horse and rode over from Kentucky. But then, you never could tell how tastes run. "Well, reckon I'll have to be rackin' out home," said he, getting up, tiptoeing to take the cramp out of his legs. "Yes, and I'll have to be stirrin' the pots to get supper for my boy Joe," she said. The smoke from her kitchen fire rose white as she put in dry sumac to give it a start. It mounted straight as a plume for a little way, until it met the cool air of evening which was beginning to fall. There it spread, like a floating silken scarf, and settled over the roof. It draped down slowly over the walls, until it enveloped the old home like the benediction of a loving heart. The sun was descending the ladder of the hills; low now it stood above them, the valley in shadow more than half its breadth, a tender flood of gold upon the slope where the new orchard waved its eager shoots; the blessing of a day was passing in the promise of a day to come. Out of the kitchen came the cheerful sound of batter for the corn bread being beaten in the bowl, and with it Sarah Newbolt's voice in song: