d if he might
come; he had said he was coming, and really there was no answer to that.
Therefore she put it out of her mind-another curious mental process we
have in dealing with a matter that is all the time the substratum of our
existence. And she was actually serious; if she was reflective, she was
conscious of being judicially reflective.

But in this period of calm and reflection it was impossible that a woman
of Margaret's habits and temperament should not attempt to settle in her
mind what that life was yonder of which she had a little taste; what
was the career that Henderson had marked out for himself; what were his
principles; what were the methods and reasons of his evident success.
Endeavoring in her clear mind to separate the person, about whose
personality she was so fondly foolish, from his schemes, which she so
dimly comprehended, and applying to his somewhat hazy occupations her
simple moral test, were the schemes quite legitimate? Perhaps she
did not go so far as this; but what she read in the newspapers of
moneymaking in these days made her secretly uneasy, and she found
herself wishing that he were definitely practicing some profession, or
engaged in some one solid occupation.

In the little parliament at our house, where everything, first and last,
was overhauled and brought to judgment, without, it must be confessed,
any visible effect on anything, one evening a common "incident" of the
day started the conversation. It was an admiring account in a newspaper
of a brilliant operation by which three or four men had suddenly become
millionaires.

"I don't see," said my wife, "any mention in this account of the
thousands who have been reduced to poverty by this operation."

"No," said Morgan; "that is not interesting."

"But it would be very interesting to me," Mrs. Fletcher remarked. "Is
there any protection, Mr. Morgan, for people who have invested their
little property?"

"Yes; the law."

"But suppose your money is all invested, say in a railway, and something
goes wrong, where are you to get the money to pay for the law that will
give you restitution? Is there anything in the State, or public opinion,
or anywhere, that will protect your interests against clever swindling?"

"Not that I know of," Morgan admitted. "You take your chance when you
let your money go out of your stocking. You see there are so many people
who want it. You can put it in the ground."

"But if I own the ground I put