"Is she as handsome as ever?"
"Um—yes—I think so. She isn't as pretty as you are."
"Oh, Will!" She blushed and dimpled.
"I declare, it is true!" He gazed at her with genuine admiration. "What has come over you to-night, Nettie?—you look like a girl again."
"And you were not sorry when you saw her, that—that—"
"Sorry! I have been thinking all the way home how glad I was to have won my sweet wife. But we mustn't stay shut up at home as much as we have; it's not good for either of us. We are to be asked to join the whist club—what do you think of that? You used to be a little card fiend once upon a time, I remember."
She sighed. "It is so long since I have been anywhere! I'm afraid I haven't any clothes, Will. I suppose I might—"
"What, dear?"
"Take the money I had put aside for Mary's next quarter's music lessons; I do really believe a little rest would do her good."
"It would—it would," said Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary's after-dinner practising hour had tinged much of his existence with gall. "I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children; it's really best for them, too. Haven't we immortal souls as well as they? Can we expect them to seek the honey dew of paradise while they see us contented to feed on the grass of the field?"