"George, dear" turned a tired eye upon her. Affection seeking to console a loved one sometimes chooses an unseasonable moment for the exercise of its tender office. She felt the look of her husband's worry-rusted eye; a memory of his weary pacing up and down the floor at night came to her, of his groans upon a comfortless bed, his sighs at breakfast, his dark brow as he went forth to try again to save his credit. She thought of this; she felt that at this moment he needed her help. And affectionately she put her hand upon his arm, and said: "You have met reverses, George, but you've still got me." And George muttered: "You bet I have." She glanced at him as if she felt that he said it with a lack of enthusiasm, as if it were a sad fact acknowledged rather than a possession declared; and she would have replied with a thin sentiment strained through the muslin of a summer book, but George turned away. She followed and he opened a gate and halted, waiting for her to pass through. The boy crawled under the fence. She scolded the youngster, brushed at his clothes, and said to George:
"He is almost a gentleman."
"Who is so far gone as that?"
"Why, the man back there on the veranda."
"I don't know what you mean by almost a gentleman."
"Oh, George, don't you know that there are distinctions?"
"But I don't see how a man can be almost a gentleman. You might as well say that a man almost has money."
"Bobbie, don't try to climb over that stump. There's a poison vine on it. Money is not everything, George."
"Comes devilish near it."
"No, George. Money is not love."