The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Kentons, by William Dean Howells

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Title: The Kentons

Author: William Dean Howells

Last Updated: February 25, 2009
Release Date: September 1, 2006 [EBook #3362]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KENTONS ***

Produced by David Widger

THE KENTONS

By William Dean Howells

I.

The Kentons were not rich, but they were certainly richer than the
average in the pleasant county town of the Middle West, where they had
spent nearly their whole married life. As their circumstances had
grown easier, they had mellowed more and more in the keeping of their
comfortable home, until they hated to leave it even for the short
outings, which their children made them take, to Niagara or the Upper
Lakes in the hot weather. They believed that they could not be so well
anywhere as in the great square brick house which still kept its four
acres about it, in the heart of the growing town, where the trees
they had planted with their own hands topped it on three aides, and a
spacious garden opened southward behind it to the summer wind. Kenton
had his library, where he transacted by day such law business as he had
retained in his own hands; but at night he liked to go to his wife's
room and sit with her there. They left the parlors and piazzas to their
girls, where they could hear them laughing with the young fellows who
came to make the morning calls, long since disused in the centres of
fashion, or the evening calls, scarcely more authorized by the great
world. She sewed, and he read his paper in her satisfactory silence, or
they played checkers together. She did not like him to win, and when she
found herself unable to bear the prospect of defeat, she refused to let
him make the move that threatened the safety of her men. Sometimes
he laughed at her, and sometimes he scolded, but they were very good
comrades, as elderly married people are apt to be. They had long ago
quarrelled out their serious differences, which mostly arose from
such differences of temperament as had first drawn them together; they
criticised each other to their children from time to time, but