side--but he knew it was down considerably.

When Betsy and George had gone to bed, Roger put down his paper.

"Look here, Edith," he proposed, "how'd you like me to read aloud while you
sew?" She looked up with a smile of pleased surprise.

"Why, father dear, I'd love it." At once, she bent over her needle again,
so that if there were any awkwardness attending this small change in their
lives it did not reveal itself in her pretty countenance. "What shall we
read?" she affably asked.

"I've got a capital book," he replied. "It's about travel in Japan."

"I'd like nothing better," Edith replied. And with a slight glow of pride
in himself Roger took his book in hand. The experiment was a decided
success. He read again the next night and the next, while Edith sat at her
sewing. And so this hour's companionship, from nine to ten in the evening,
became a regular custom--just one hour and no more, which Roger spent with
his daughter, intimately and pleasantly. Yes, life was certainly smoothing
out.

Edith's three older children had been reinstated in school. And although at
first, when deprived of their aid, she had found it nearly impossible to
keep her two small boys amused and give them besides the four hours a day
of fresh air they required, she had soon met this trouble by the same
simple process as before. Of her few possessions still unsold, she had
disposed of nearly all, and with a small fund thus secured she had sent for
Hannah to return. The house was running beautifully.

Christmas, too, was drawing near. And though Roger knew that in Edith's
heart was a cold dread of this season, she bravely kept it to herself; and
she set about so determinedly to make a merry holiday, that her father
admiring her pluck drew closer still to his daughter. He entered into her
Christmas plans and into all the conspiracies which were whispered about
the house. Great secrets, anxious consultations, found in him a ready
listener.

So passed three blessed quiet weeks, and he had high hopes for the winter.

CHAPTER XXXI

If there were any cloud upon his horizon, it was the thought of Laura. She
had barely been to the house since Edith had come back to town; and at
times, especially in the days when things had looked dark for Roger, he had
caught himself reproaching this giddy-gaddy youngest child, so engrossed in
her small "menage" that apparently she could not spare a thought for her
widowed sister. Laura on her retu