Two hours afterward, as Brainard sat at his desk trying to fix his mind upon the accounts before him, a note was handed in bearing his address. He broke the seal, and found that it enclosed one hundred and seventy dollars, with these few words from Anna:
"This is the best I can do for you, dear husband. Will it be enough?"
"God bless her!" came half audibly from the lips of Brainard, as he drew forth his pocket-book, in which were thirty dollars. "Yes, it will be enough."
"There is no comfort in owing, or in paying after this fashion," said the young man to himself, as he walked homeward at dinner-time, with his last note in his pocket. "There will have to be a change."
And there was a change. When next I visited my young friend, I found him in a smaller house, looking as comfortable and happy as I could have wished to see him. We talked pleasantly about the errors of the past, and the trouble which had followed as a natural result.
"There is one thing," said Brainard, during the conversation, glancing at his wife as he spoke, "that I have not been able to make out."
"What is that?" asked Mrs. Brainard, smiling.
"Where the last one hundred and seventy dollars you gave me came from."
"Have you missed nothing?" said she, archly.
"Nothing," was his reply.