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window was not closed, but it sent out no more light. The song was not heard, and many small, faint signs gave indication that anxiety had come to be a guest in the little house. At evening the wife was seen in her front door and about its steps, watching in a new, restless way for her husband's coming; and when he came it could be seen, all the way from those upper windows, where one or two faces appeared now and then, that he was troubled and care-worn. There were two more days like this one; but at the end of the fourth the wife read good tidings in her husband's countenance. He handed her a newspaper, and pointed to a list of departing passengers. "They're gone!" she exclaimed. He nodded, and laid off his hat. She cast her arms about his neck, and buried her head in his bosom. You could almost have seen Anxiety flying out at the window. By morning the widows knew of a certainty that the cloud had melted away. In the counting-room one evening, as Richling said good-night with noticeable alacrity, one of his employers, sitting with his legs crossed over the top of a desk, said to his partner:-- "Richling works for his wages." "That's all," replied the other; "he don't see his interests in ours any more than a tinsmith would, who comes to mend the roof." The first one took a meditative puff or two from his cigar, tipped off its ashes, and responded:-- "Common fault. He completely overlooks his immense indebtedness to the world at large, and his dependence on it. He's a good fellow, and bright; but he actually thinks that he and the world are starting even." "His wife's his world," said the other, and opened the Bills Payable book. Who will say it is not well to sail in an ocean of love? But the Richlings were becalmed in theirs, and, not knowing it, were satisfied. Day in, day out, the little wife sat at her window, and drove her needle. Omnibuses rumbled by; an occasional wagon or cart set the dust a-flying; the street venders passed, crying the praises of their goods and wares; the blue sky grew more and more intense as weeks piled up upon weeks; but the empty repetitions, and the isolation, and, worst of all, the escape of time,--she smiled at all, and sewed on and crooned on, in the sufficient thought that John would come, each time, when only hours enough had passed away forever. Once she saw Dr. Sevier's carriage. She bowed brightly, but he--what could it mean?--he lifted his hat with such a
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