But as Effie May pointed out to the Major, himself a trifle shocked by this eccentricity of costume in a lady of his family, "She's slim enough to wear 'em, Dickie, and those full silk pants are certainly becoming to the feet. Wish I had some myself--Don't you worry," she added, chuckling over the Major's expression, "I haven't! Pantaloons weren't meant for the pincushion style of figger." Archibald, of course, found the Mandarin costume adorable. He would have found any costume of Joan's adorable, even a Mother Hubbard, or its lineal descendant, the bungalow-apron. Altogether, Joan had a rather happy aftermath to her honeymoon. "The pasture-time," she called it, during which she was as placid and content as a cow in a clover-field. For the first and possibly the last time in her life she was quite free from worry. That was one of the things Archie took completely out of her hands. He would have liked to take everything out of her hands that might be irksome to her--her thinking, her very sleeping and eating, had it been possible. But worry at least was something he could take upon his own broad shoulders. Her personal allowance and the allowance he made her for household expenses were paid regularly into her account--an arrangement Joan had insisted upon, despite his protest. "Why should you be bothered with the paying of bills, darlingest?" "But I _love_ to pay bills, Archie," she had replied, rather piteously to one who had known anything of the earlier Darcy _ménage_. "It's a real pleasure to get them all out of the way before the tenth of the month!" And it was a pleasure she attended to religiously, even after she began to grow a little lax and indifferent about other household matters. There were to be no "Indians" in the annals of the Blair family. Joan had never been so sluggish mentally as in these first months of married life; yet she felt almost abnormally normal, close to the great heart of existence, at one with the physical world about her, content with the content of a cog which fits well into the wheel where it belongs. Long afterwards some would-be cynic asked her whether she believed that marriage _per se_ was an experiment which paid. "Yes!" she answered without hesitation. "If only for the moment when you tell your husband that he is to have a child." CHAPTER XL Her father took a satisfaction in Joan's house and husband and general condition of modest prosperity which surprised and rather touched the girl. It was as if he found in her well-being a justification of something that needed justifying. "I may have my weaknesses," his manner seemed to say, "but observe how well I have provided for my child!" He dropped in almost daily for his afternoon julep on the shaded porch that overlooked her garden. Effie May had the tact rarely to accompany him, and Joan found herself seeing more of her father than she ever had under his own roof.