by return mail."

Eddie loved that. There was a fine chivalry and democracy about it, as
one should say: "We're all debtors and creditors in this world, and we
big fellows and you little fellows must all work together."

Life had a regularity now that would have maddened a man more ambitious
than Eddie or a woman more restless than Ellaphine. Their world
was like the petunia-garden--the flowers were not orchids or
telegraph-pole-stemmed roses; but the flower faces were joyous, their
frocks neat, and their perfume savory.

Eddie knew just how much money was coming in and there was no temptation
to hope for an increase. They knew just how much time they had, and one
day was like another except that along about the first of every month
Eddie went to the office a little earlier and went back at night to get
out the bills and adjust his balances.

On these evenings Ellaphine was apt to go along and sit with him,
knitting thick woolen socks for the winter, making him shirts or
nightgowns, or fashioning something for herself or the house. Her
loftiest reach of splendor was a crazy quilt; and her rag carpets were
highly esteemed.

On Sundays they went to church in the morning and again in the evening.
Prayer-meeting night saw them always on their way to the place where the
church bell called: "Come! Come!"

Sometimes irregular people, who forgot it was prayer-meeting night,
would be reminded of it by seeing Eddie and Ellar go by. They went so
early that there was time for the careless to make haste with their
bonnets and arrive in time.

It was a saying that housewives set their kitchen clocks by Eddie's
transits to and from the factory. At any rate, there was no end to the
occasions when shiftless gossips, dawdling on their porches, were
surprised to see Eddie toddle homeward, and scurried away, cackling:

"My gracious! There goes Eddie Pouch, and my biscuits not cut out!"

X

The whole year was tranquil now for the Pouches, and the halcyon brooded
unalarmed in the waveless cove of their life. There were no debtors to
be harassed, no creditors to harass them. They paid cash for
everything--at least, Ellaphine did; for Eddie turned his entire
forty-five dollars over to her. She was his banker and his steward.

She could not persuade him to smoke, or to buy new clothes before the
old ones grew too shabby for so nice a man as a bookkeeper is apt to be.
He did not drink or play cards or billiards; he did not belong