tool room?" Rose's eyes opened wide. "I can prove it to you."

That was all. But the shack filled with his disapproval of her
reluctance to free him from his promise. She remembered one time
when she had come home from school in a pelting rain that had
changed, suddenly, to hail. There had seemed no escape from the
hard, little balls and their cruel bruises. Just so, it seemed to
her, from Martin, outwardly so calm as he read his paper, the
harsh, determined thoughts beat thick and fast. Turn what way she
would, they surrounded, enveloped and pounded down upon her. Her
resolution weakened. Wasn't she paying too big a price for what
was, after all, only material? The one time she and Martin had
seemed quite close had been the moment in which she had agreed so
quickly to change the location of the concrete floor. Now she had
utterly lost him. She could scarcely endure the aloofness with
which he had withdrawn into himself.

"Martin," she said a bit huskily, two evenings later, at supper,
"I've decided that you are right. It is foolish and extravagant
of me to want a second story when there are just the two of us.
It will be better to have all those other things you told me
about."

Martin did not respond; simply continued eating without looking
up. This was a habit of his that nearly drove Rose desperate. In
her father's household meals had always been friendly, sociable
affairs. Patrick Conroy had been loquacious and by way of a wit;
sharpened on his, Rose's own had developed. They had dealt in
delicious nonsense, these two, and had her husband been of a
different temperament she might have found it a refuge in her