given to beauty; but the men in the shops wrote down the new name
and address with especial zeal and amiability. She remembered the
old necessities, bacon and lard and sugar and matches; she
recovered the kitchen clock from its wrapping of newspaper, and
wound it, and set it on the sink shelf; she was busy with a
hundred improvements and cares, and was almost too tired, when
Martin came home to dinner, to sit up and share it with him.

It was warm in the dining room and Cherry yawned over her dessert,
and rose stiff and aching to return to the kitchen with plates and
silver, glasses and food, to shake the tablecloth, to pile and
wash and wipe and put away the china, to brush the floor and the
stove, and do the last wiping and wringing, and to turn out the
gas, and go in to her chair beside the airtight stove.

Martin handed her half his paper and Cherry took it, realizing
with cheerful indifference that there was a streak of soot on one
cuff, and that her hands were affected by grease and hot water.
She read jokes and recipes and answers to correspondents, and
small editorial fillers as to the number of nutmegs consumed in
China yearly, and the name and circumstances of the oldest living
man in England. A new novel was in her bedroom, but she was too
comfortable and too tired to go get it, and at ten she rose
yawning and stumbling, and went to bed. Breakfast must be on the
table at half-past seven, for Martin left for the mine at eight,
and she had had a hard day.

For a few weeks the novelty lasted and Cherry was enthusiastic
about everything. She looked out across her dishpan at green
fields and the beginning of the farms; she saw the lilacs burst