 How did Henry feel about the remodeled bedrooms?
There was the usual welcoming crowd for a celebrity, and the usual speeches by the usual politicians who met him at the airport which had once been twenty miles outside of Croton, but which the growing city had since engulfed and placed well within its boundaries. There he sat between the mayor and a nervous young coed chosen as homecoming queen, and looked out at the police and fire department bands, the National Guard, the boy scouts and girl scouts, the Elks and Masons. Several of the churches in town had shown indecision as to how to instruct their parishioners to treat him. He wanted a meal at his own table, a kiss from his wife, a word from his son, and later to see some old friends and a relative or two. They had rehabilitated, spruced up, almost rebuilt the entire outside and grounds. The head of the American Legion and the chief of police, who had escorted him on this trip from the square, didn't ask to go in with him. He walked up what had once been a concrete path and was now an ornate flagstone path. They held onto each other as if seeking mutual support, the thirty-three-year old woman and ten-year-old boy. So he put him down and told himself that it would all change, that everything would loosen up just as his commanding officer, General Carlisle, had said it would early this morning before he left Washington. Carlisle had said his position was analogous to Columbus', to Vasco De Gama's, to Preshoff's when the Russian returned from the Moon—but more so. He saw twin beds separated by an ornate little table with an ornate little lamp, and this looked more ominous a barrier to him than the twelve-foot concrete-and-barbed-wire fence around the experimental station. The body scars were faint, the scars running in long lines, one dissecting his chest, the other slicing diagonally across his upper abdomen to disappear under his trousers. Which was not what he'd considered at all important on leaving Walter Reed Hospital early this morning; which was something he found distasteful, something he felt beneath them both. And, at the same time, he began to understand that there would be many things, previously beneath them both, which would have to be considered. After all, he was still Henry Devers, the same man who had left home eleven months ago, with a love for family and friends which was, if anything, stronger than before.
 He felt sad that yet another thing was unfamiliar.
 He was thankful to have a private place to rest.  He felt sad that yet another thing was unfamiliar.  He was angry because he really liked his old bed.  He thought the new paint was nice but didn't like the furniture.