" said Fanny, judiciously.
"I've been thinkin' every evening lately that he'd be comin'. I've
had the fire in the parlor stove all ready to touch off, an' I've
kept dusted in there. I know he liked her, but mebbe he's like all
the rest of the big-bugs."

"What do you mean?" asked Andrew, with an inward qualm of repulsion.
He always hated unspeakably to hear his wife say "big-bugs" in that
tone. Although he was far from being without humility, he was
republican to the core in his estimate of his own status in his own
free country. In his heart, as long as he kept the law of God and
man, he recognized no "big-bugs." It was one of the taints of his
wife's ancestry which grated upon him from time to time.

"Oh, well, mebbe he don't want to be seen callin' on a shop-girl."

"Then he'd better keep away, that's all!" cried Andrew, furiously.

"Oh, well, mebbe it ain't so," said Fanny. "He's always seemed to me
like a sensible feller, and I know he's liked Ellen, an' lots of
girls that work in shops marry rich. Look at Annie Graves, married
that factory boss over to Pemberton, an' has everythin'. She'd
worked in his factory years. Mebbe it ain't that."

"Ellen don't act as if she minded anything about his not comin',"
said Andrew, anxiously.

"Land, no; she ain't that kind. She's too much like her grandmother,
but there 'ain't been a night lately that she 'ain't done her hair
over when she got home from the shop and changed her dress."

"She always changes her dress, don't she?" said Andrew.

"Oh yes, she always has done that. I guess she likes to get rid of
the leather smell for a while; but she has put on that pretty, new,
red silk waist, and I've seen her watchin', though she's never said
anything."

"You don't suppose she--" began Andrew, in a voice of intensest
anxiety and indignant tenderness.

"Land, no; Ellen Brewster ain't a girl to fret herself much over any
man unless she's sure he wants her; trust her. Don't you worry about
that. All I mean is, I know she's had a kind of an idea that he
might come."

Ellen, up-stairs, lay listening against her will, and felt herself
burning with mortified pride and shame. She said to herself that she
would never put on that red silk waist again of an evening; she
would not even do her hair over. It was quite true that she had
thought that Robert might come, that he might renew his offer, now
that he was so differently situated, and the obstacles, on his side,
at leas