clerk, to be seated.

Until the senior partner has finished with Gaskell young Thorne must
remain seated.

"Gaskell," said Mr. Carroll, "if we had listened to you, if we'd run
this place as it was when father was alive, this never would have
happened. It _hasn't_ happened, but we've had our lesson. And after
this we're going slow and going straight. And we don't need you to tell
us how to do that. We want you to go away--on a month's vacation. When I
thought we were going under I planned to send the children on a
sea-voyage with the governess--so they wouldn't see the newspapers. But
now that I can look them in the eye again, I need them, I can't let them
go. So, if you'd like to take your wife on an ocean trip to Nova Scotia
and Quebec, here are the cabins I reserved for the kids. They call it
the Royal Suite--whatever that is--and the trip lasts a month. The boat
sails to-morrow morning. Don't sleep too late or you may miss her."

* * * * *

The head clerk was secreting the tickets in the inside pocket of his
waistcoat. His fingers trembled, and when he laughed his voice trembled.

"Miss the boat!" the head clerk exclaimed. "If she gets away from Millie
and me she's got to start now. We'll go on board to-night!"

A half-hour later Millie was on her knees packing a trunk, and her
husband was telephoning to the drug-store for a sponge bag and a cure
for sea-sickness.

Owing to the joy in her heart and to the fact that she was on her knees,
Millie was alternately weeping into the trunk-tray and offering up
incoherent prayers of thanksgiving. Suddenly she sank back upon the
floor.

"John!" she cried, "doesn't it seem sinful to sail away in a 'royal
suite' and leave this beautiful flat empty?"

Over the telephone John was having trouble with the drug clerk.

"No!" he explained, "I'm not sea-sick _now_. The medicine I want is
to be taken later. I _know_ I'm speaking from the Pavonia; but the
Pavonia isn't a ship; it's an apartment-house."

He turned to Millie. "We can't be in two places at the same time," he
suggested.

"But, think," insisted Millie, "of all the poor people stifling to-night
in this heat, trying to sleep on the roofs and fire-escapes; and our
flat so cool and big and pretty--and no one in it."

John nodded his head proudly.

"I know it's big," he said, "but it isn't big enough to hold all the
people who are sleeping to-night on the roofs and in the