and outwardly catering to him. He solaced his pride
with a thought of what Davidge's business would look like when he got
through with it.

He laughed: "All right, boss. I was just beefin', for the fun of
beefin'. Them shanties suit me elegant."

Then his fool wife had to go and bust in, "Oh, Jake, if you would do
like Mr. Davidge done, and git rich and live easy!"

Jake gave her a pantomimic rebuke that reduced her to a pulpy
silence.

Marie Louise thought to restore Abbie's spirits a little by saying
that she herself was coming down to work and to live in one of those
very shanties. But Abbie gave her up as hopeless. Why any one should
want to leave a house like what Mamise had, and money in the bank, and
no call to lift her hand for nothing except to ring a bell and get
somebody to fetch anything, and leave all that and live like a
squatter and actually work--well, it did beat all how foolish some
folks could be in the world nowadays.

Marie Louise left Abbie and Jake to establish themselves. She had to
get back to Washington. Davidge had planned to go with her, but a
long-distance telephone-call, and a visit from a group of prospective
strikers, and a warning that a consignment of long-expected machinery
had not yet arrived, took him out of the car. He was tempted to go
with Marie Louise, anyway, but she begged him not to neglect his
business for her unimportant self, and bade him good-by in an old
Wakefield phrase, "If I don't see you again, hello!"

She returned to Washington alone, but not lonely. Her thoughts smoked
through her brain like a dust-cloud of shining particles, each radiant
atom a great idea. The road home was through the sky; the villages and
groves were vague pink clouds; the long downward slopes were shafts of
sunlight, the ridges rainbows.

It would take her hardly any time to conquer the mysteries of
stenography. Surely they must be easy, considering some of the people
that practised the art. She would study ship-building, and drafting,
too. Her water-color landscapes had been highly praised by certain
young men and old ladies in England. She would learn how to keep her
own bank-account and revamp her arithmetic. She would take up light
bookkeeping; and she would build up her strength in a gymnasium so
that she could swing a sledge as well as the next one. She would offer
her home in Washington for rent. With the mobs pouring in, it would
not be untenanted long.

Her last expectation