d it wouldn't be
safe for me to go any higher--for a while."

Williams smiled at Bertha. "Better send the missus, then. The men all
have a great idea of her. They say she's a kind of mascot. McGonnigle
asks me every time what she thinks of our new shaft. I've a kind of
reverence for her judgment myself. They say women kind o' feel their way
to a conclusion. Now, I'd like her to pass judgment on our work in _The
Diamond Ace_."

"I'd like to go up," said Bertha. But, in truth, she was no longer
thinking of the mine: she was considering how she might make her table
look as pretty as Mrs. Congdon's. Her first dissatisfaction with her own
way of life filled her mind. "I must have some of those candles," she
said to herself, while the men were still intent upon the mine. Her
first step towards social conformity was at this moment taken.

She felt herself akin to these people, and this assertion, subconscious
and unuttered, brought something between Marshall Haney and herself. It
was not merely that she was younger and clearer of record, but she was
perfectly certain that with education she could hold her own with the
Congdons or any one else. "If my father had lived, I wouldn't be the
ignoramus I am to-day." But she had no plan for acquiring the knowledge
she needed other than by reading books. She resolved to read every day,
though each hour so spent must be taken from her husband, now piteously
dependent upon her.

He managed his morning paper very well, but when she read aloud to him
he almost always went to sleep.

CHAPTER XI

BEN BECOMES ADVISER TO MRS. HANEY

Bertha was astir early the next morning, and quite ready to join the
Fordyces as soon as breakfast was over; but they did not come. She
waited and watched the whole forenoon, and when at twelve o'clock they
had neither called nor sent word, her day suddenly sank into
nothingness, like a collapsed balloon, and she faced her tasks with a
weakness of will not native to her.

Haney and Williams were both down street discussing some business matter
with Crego, and this left her hours the more empty and unsatisfactory.
As the dinner-hour drew near she drove to fetch her husband, hoping for
a glimpse of the Fordyces on the way, but even this comfort was denied
her, and she ached with dull pain which she could not analyze.

As Haney settled himself in the carriage, he said: "Well, little woman,
did ye have a good ride?"

"I didn't go," she responded, w