Why had he bought that hideous horsehair furniture?
To remind her of the old provincial heirlooms of her father's sitting-room.

Did it remind her of it?
The stiff and stony emptiness of this room had been fashioned upon the decorous respectability of his own father's parlor--in which his father, who usually spent his slippered leisure in the family sitting-room, never entered except on visits from the minister.

It had chilled his own youthful soul--why had he perpetuated it here?
He could only answer these questions by moodily wandering about the house, and regretting he had not gone with her.

After a vain attempt to establish social and domestic relations with the hot-air drum by putting his feet upon it--after an equally futile attempt to extract interest from the book of sermons by opening its pages at random--he glanced at the clock and suddenly resolved to go and fetch her.

It would remind him of the old times when he used to accompany her from church, and, after her parents had retired, spend a blissful half-hour alone with her.