Elliott could not help asking,
"to have a feller like Peter in the family?"
Mrs. Gray bit her thread. "I don't know what you got against Peter," she
said; "I look to like him the best of my son-in-laws, so far."
But that evening, as she sat with her husband beside the old
reading-lamp which all the electricity that Sylvia had installed had not
caused them to give up, her courage deserted her. Howard, sensing that
something was wrong, looked up from "Hoard's Dairyman," which he was
eagerly devouring, to see that the _Wallacetown Bugle_ had slipped to her
knees, and that she sat staring straight ahead of her, the tears rolling
down her cheeks.
"Why, Mary," he said in amazement--"Mary--"
The old-fashioned New Englander is as unemotional as he is
undemonstrative. For a moment Howard, always slow of speech and action,
was too nonplussed to know what to do, deeply sorry as he felt for his
wife. Then he leaned over and patted her hand--the hand that was scarcely
less rough and scarred than his own--with his big calloused one.
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