ed books to be righted; and so more weeks passed.
Happy weeks! Happy days! Ah, the joy of them! John bringing home money,
and Mary saving it!

"But, John, it seems such a pity not to have stayed with A, B, & Co.;
doesn't it?"

"I don't think so. I don't think they'll last much longer."

And when he brought word that A, B, & Co. had gone into a thousand
pieces Mary was convinced that she had a very far-seeing husband.

By and by, at Richling's earnest and restless desire, they moved their
lodgings again. And thus we return by a circuit to the morning when Dr.
Sevier, taking up his slate, read the summons that bade him call at the
corner of St. Mary and Prytania streets.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

The house stands there to-day. A small, pinched, frame,
ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward
St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the
sidewalk. There the Doctor's carriage stopped, and in its front room he
found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living
in the adjoining half of the house, was attending to the invalid's
wants, and had kept her daughter from the public school to send her to
the apothecary with the Doctor's prescription.

"It is the poor who help the poor," thought the physician.

"Is this your home?" he asked the woman softly, as he sat down by the
patient's pillow. He looked about upon the small, cheaply furnished
room, full of the neat makeshifts of cramped housewifery.

"It's mine," whispered Mary. Even as she lay there in peril of her life,
and flattened out as though Juggernaut had rolled over her, her eyes
shone with happiness and scintillated as the Doctor exclaimed in
undertone:--

"Yours!" He laid his hand upon her forehead. "Where is Mr. Richling?"

"At the office." Her eyes danced with delight. She would have begun,
then and there, to tell him all that had happened,--"had taken care of
herself all along," she said, "until they began to move. In moving, had
been _obliged_ to overwork--hardly _fixed_ yet"--

But the Doctor gently checked her and bade her be quiet.

"I will," was the faint reply; "I will; but--just one thing, Doctor,
please let me say."

"Well?"

"John"--

"Yes, yes; I know; he'd be here, only you wouldn't let him stay away
from his work."

She smiled assent, and he smiled in return.

"'Business is business,'" he said.

She turned a quick, sparkling glance of af