weather, and said that she had not called the children, because it was
Saturday, and they might as well have their sleep out. He liked to
see her in that dress; it had a leafy rustling that was pleasant to
his ear, and as she looked into the library he gaily put out his hand,
which she took, and suffered herself to be drawn toward him. Then she
gave him a kiss, somewhat less business-like and preoccupied than
usual.

"Well, you've got Lemuel Barker off your mind at last," she divined,
in recognition of her husband's cheerfulness.

"Yes, he's off," admitted Sewell.

"I hope he'll stay in Willoughby Pastures after this. Of course it
puts an end to our going there next summer." "Oh, I don't know,"
Sewell feebly demurred.

"_I_ do," said his wife, but not despising his insincerity
enough to insist that he did also. The mellow note of an apostle's
bell--the gift of an aesthetic parishioner--came from below, and she
said, "Well, there's breakfast, David," and went before him down the
stairs.

He brought his papers with him. It would have been her idea of
heightened cosiness, at this breakfast, which they had once a week
alone together, not to have the newspapers, but she saw that he felt
differently, and after a number of years of married life a woman
learns to let her husband have his own way in some unimportant
matters. It was so much his nature to have some sort of reading
always in hand, that he was certainly more himself, and perhaps more