strength entered into me, and I was aware of a power in myself
that was neither hers nor mine, but the welding of the finer qualities
in both our natures.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE RED FLAG AT THE GATE

Sally was not beside me when I awoke in the morning, nor was she sipping
her coffee by the window, as I had sometimes found her doing when I
slept late. Going downstairs an hour afterwards, I discovered her, for
the first time since our marriage, awaiting me in the dining-room. In
her dainty breakfast jacket of blue silk, with a bit of lace and ribbon
framing her wreath of plaits, she appeared to my tired eyes as the
embodied freshness and buoyancy of the morning. Would her sparkling
gaiety endure, I wondered, through the monotonous days ahead, when
poverty became, not a child's play, not a game tricked out by the
imagination, but the sordid actuality of hard work and hourly
self-denial?

"I am practising early rising, Ben," she said, "and it's astonishing
what an appetite it gives one. I've made the coffee myself, and Aunt
Mehitable has just taught me how to make yeast. One can never tell what
may come useful, you know, and if we go to live somewhere in a jungle,
which I'm quite prepared to do, you'd be glad to know that I could make
yeast, wouldn't you?"

"I suppose so, sweetheart, and as a matter of fact," I added presently,
"this is the best cup of coffee I've had for many a month."

Laughing merrily, she perched herself on the arm of my chair, and sipped
out of the cup I held toward her. "Of course it is. So you've gained
that much by losing everything. It's very strange, Ben, and you may
consider it presumptuous, but I've a profound conviction somewhere in
the bottom of my heart that I can do everything better than anybody
else, if I once turn my hand to it. At this minute I haven't a doubt
that my yeast is better than Aunt Mehitable's. I'm going to cook dinner,
too, and she'll be positively jealous of my performance. How do we know
whether or not we'll meet any cooks in the jungle? And if we do, they'll
probably be tigers--"

"Oh, Sally, Sally! You think it play now, but what will you feel when
you know it's earnest?"

"Of course it's earnest. Do you imagine I'd get out of my bed at seven
o'clock and cut up a slimy potato if it wasn't earnest? That may be your
idea of play, but it's not mine."

"And you expect to flutter about a stove in a pale blue breakfast jacket
and a lace cap?"

"Just as long a