"I don't know as she is, Mr. Archie," replied the other, her eyes taking avid note of Joan's smart tailor-made dress and traveling hat. "But I know she's expectin' company all right, 'cause I been smellin' comp'ny cookin' all day! Go right up and make yourselves to hum," she urged, with the never-failing hospitality of her class. Archibald led his wife up the dim, curved stairway that had doubtless known the reluctant feet of many another bride before her, and opened Ellen's door with a key. "Yon _are_ honored," murmured Joan. "I didn't dream that Ellen had got to the point of trusting gentlemen with her latch-key!" "Look!" said Archie proudly. The room was gay with flowers, truly a bridal bower; and in its center stood the old round walnut table she had known all her life, much battered by the kicking of her own youthful toes, set for two, and laden with delicacies. There was a small but magnificent wedding-cake, there was chicken-salad, crisp pink tongue, pickles, chocolates of Joan's favorite brand, and resting in a pail of ice-water, its neck swathed in a napkin, a bottle of champagne. "Cinnamon-rolls keeping hot in the warmer, butter in the ice-box right-hand side, and I'm only to light the jet under the coffee-pot, and leave it to bubble ten minutes--" murmured Archie, as one reciting a well-conned lesson. Joan's listlessness suddenly disappeared. She hugged him. "What a perfectly _beautiful_ wedding-supper!" she cried. "Was it your idea, or Ellen's?" "A sort of combination, I guess. She thought you might feel more homelike here with your mother's things, and I--well, it's my home too, you see!--So you don't mind?" "Mind!" she winked hard to keep the tears back. "Archie, let's have pancakes, too!" she cried. They had pancakes. They also had eggs, in the scrambling of which Archibald was quite expert. Afterwards they washed the pans and dishes together, with two of Ellen's aprons tied around their necks, amid much merriment. "I had no idea married life was so pleasant!" she sighed. "Archie, let's always do our work like this, together!" "Work?" he picked up one of her hands and examined it reverently. Joan had rather beautiful hands, sensitive and lithe, delicately white, with rosy palms and finger-tips. "I'll let you play at work now and then," he said soberly. "But work is for us men, my Joan, not for our women!" "It's fortunate the cooks and housemaids of the land don't agree with you," she teased; "or perhaps they do, and hence the servant problem!" Later, they locked Ellen's door and put the key under the mat, and went up a flight higher. Joan entered Archie's room with some curiosity. To her, people's environment spoke a clear language; and sometimes she realized, with a little shock, that she knew nothing at all of the man she had married.