She began to cry, and he felt as if every one of her
tears were pouring over him like burning lead.
“Don’t, Matt, don’t-oh, don’t!”
he implored her.
She struggled to her feet, and he rose and followed
her helplessly while she spread out the pieces of
glass on the kitchen dresser. It seemed to him
as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay
there.
“Here, give them to me,” he said in a
voice of sudden authority.
She drew aside, instinctively obeying his tone.
“Oh, Ethan, what are you going to do?”
Without replying he gathered the pieces of glass into
his broad palm and walked out of the kitchen to the
passage. There he lit a candle-end, opened the
china-closet, and, reaching his long arm up to the
highest shelf, laid the pieces together with such accuracy
of touch that a close inspection convinced him of
the impossibility of detecting from below that the
dish was broken. If he glued it together the
next morning months might elapse before his wife noticed
what had happened, and meanwhile he might after all
be able to match the dish at Shadd’s Falls or
Bettsbridge. Having satisfied himself that there
was no risk of immediate discovery he went back to
the kitchen with a lighter step, and found Mattie disconsolately
removing the last scraps of pickle from the floor.
“It’s all right, Matt. Come back
and finish supper,” he commanded her.
Completely reassured, she shone on him through tear-hung
lashes, and his soul swelled with pride as he saw
how his tone subdued her. She did not even ask
what he had done. Except when he was steering
a big log down the mountain to his mill he had never
known such a thrilling sense of mastery.
They finished supper, and while Mattie cleared the
table Ethan went to look at the cows and then took
a last turn about the house. The earth lay dark
under a muffled sky and the air was so still that now
and then he heard a lump of snow come thumping down
from a tree far off on the edge of the wood-lot.
When he returned to the kitchen Mattie had pushed
up his chair to the stove and seated herself near
the lamp with a bit of sewing. The scene was
just as he had dreamed of it that morning. He
sat down, drew his pipe from his pocket and stretched
his feet to the glow. His hard day’s work
in the keen air made him feel at once lazy and light
of mood, and he had a confused sense of being in another
world, where all was warmth and harmony and time could
bring no change. The only drawback to his complete
well-being was the fact that he could not see Mattie
from where he sat; but he was too indolent to move
and after a moment he said: “Come over here
and sit by the stove.”
