"There," she said--"I knew it! This house is fatal! They're making an old
woman of you already." Her tone was tragic.
"Miss Lorenz likes the new method, but my personal preference is for the
old way, with the bride's face covered."
He sucked calmly at his dead pipe.
"Katie has a new prescription--recipe--for bread. It has more bread and
fewer air-holes. One cake of yeast--"
Sidney sprang to her feet.
"It's perfectly terrible!" she cried. "Because you rent a room in this
house is no reason why you should give up your personality and
your--intelligence. Not but that it's good for you. But Katie has made
bread without masculine assistance for a good many years, and if Christine
can't decide about her own veil she'd better not get married. Mother says
you water the flowers every evening, and lock up the house before you go to
bed. I--I never meant you to adopt the family!"
K. removed his pipe and gazed earnestly into the bowl.
"Bill Taft has had kittens under the porch," he said. "And the groceryman
has been sending short weight. We've bought scales now, and weigh
everything."
"You are evading the question."
"Dear child, I am doing these things because I like to do them. For--for
some time I've been floating, and now I've got a home. Every time I lock up
the windows at night, or cut a picture out of a magazine as a suggestion to
your Aunt Harriet, it's an anchor to windward."
Sidney gazed helplessly at his imperturbable face. He seemed older than
she had recalled him: the hair over his ears was almost white. And yet, he
was just thirty. That was Palmer Howe's age, and Palmer seemed like a boy.
But he held himself more erect than he had in the first days of his
occupancy of the second-floor front.
"And now," he said cheerfully, "what about yourself? You've lost a lot of
illusions, of course, but perhaps you've gained ideals. That's a step."
"Life," observed Sidney, with the wisdom of two weeks out in the world,
"life is a terrible thing, K. We think we've got it, and--it's got us."
"Undoubtedly."
"When I think of how simple I used to think it all was! One grew up and
got married, and--and perhaps had children. And when one got very old, one
died. Lately, I've been seeing that life really consists of
exceptions--children who don't grow up, and grown-ups who die before they
are old. And"--this took an effort, but she looked at him squarely--"and
people who have children, but are not married. It all rather hurts."