ctually
believe that all his savings were gone, sunken out of sight forever
in this awful shaft of miscalculation and misfortune. What he
dreaded most was that Fanny should find out, as she would have to
were he long out of employment.

Andrew, when he entered the house on his return from work, had come
to open a door into the room where his wife was, with a deprecating
and apologetic air. He gained confidence when, after a few minutes,
the sore subject had not been broached.

To-night, as usual, when he came into the sitting-room where Fanny
was sewing it was with a sidelong glance of uneasy deprecation
towards her, and an attempt to speak easily, as if he had nothing on
his mind.

"Pretty warm day," he began, but his wife cut him short. She faced
around towards him beaming, her work--a pink wrapper--slid from her
lap to the floor.

"What do you think, Andrew?" she said. "What do you s'pose has
happened? Guess." Andrew laughed gratefully, and with the greatest
alacrity. Surely this was nothing about mining-stocks, unless,
indeed, she had heard, and the stocks had gone up, but that seemed
to much like the millennium. He dismissed that from his mind before
it entered. He stood before her in his worn clothes. He always wore
a collar and a black tie, and his haggard face was carefully shaven.
Andrew was punctiliously neat, on Ellen's account. He was always
thinking, suppose he should meet Ellen coming home from school, with
some young ladies whose fathers were rich and did not have to work
in the shop, how mortified she might feel if he looked shabby and
unkempt.

"Guess, Andrew," she said.

"What is it?" said Andrew.

"Oh, you guess."

"I don't see what it can be, Fanny."

"Well, Ellen has got the valedictory. What's the matter with you? Be
you deaf? Ellen has got the valedictory out of all them girls and
boys."

"She has, has she?" said Andrew. He dropped into a chair and looked
at his wife. There was something about the intense interchange of
confidence of delight between these two faces of father and mother
which had almost the unrestraint of lunacy. Andrew's jaw fairly
dropped with his smile, which was a silent laugh rather than a
smile; his eyes were wild with delight. "She has, has she?" he kept
repeating.

"Yes, she has," said Fanny. She tossed her head with an incomparable
pride; she coughed a little, affected cough. "I s'pose you know what
a compliment it is?" said she. "It means that she's sma