replied indirectly. "She says I can come back whenever I like."
"Your Phebe has no say in it." He spoke harshly. "We're honestly promised to each other and don't need outside advice or interference."
"Don't you go to call Phebe 'outside,'" she retorted. "She's my sister. Perhaps it's a good thing she came when she did, and saved me from being buried. Perhaps I'm not aiming to be married right off."
Hannah was standing, a hand on the table that held the pink-shaded lamp, and the light showed her petulant and antagonistic. A flare of anger threatened to shut all else from Calvin's thoughts; but suddenly he was conscious of the necessity for care—care and patience. He forced back his justified sense of wrong.
"I wasn't referring direct to Phebe," he told her. "I meant that between us nobody else matters, no one in the world is of any importance to me but you. It's all I think about. When I was building the house, our house, I hammered you into it with every nail. It is sort of made out of you," he foundered; "like—like I am."
He could see her relenting in the loss of the rigidity of her pose. Hannah's head drooped and her fingers tapped faintly on the table. He moved closer, urging his advantage.
"We're all but married, Hannah; our carpet is being wove and that suite of furniture ordered through Priest. You've been upset by this talk of theaters and such.
