--most of all she was dallying with the idea of asking him
where he had been till after midnight. He smiled affably in the face of
this scattering fire of peevish glances, and did not dream of resenting
any phase of them all.

"I am going down to Thurston's this morning, and order that piano sent
up today," he announced presently, in a casual way.

"Why, Theron, can we afford it?" the wife asked, regarding him with
surprise.

"Oh, easily enough," he replied light-heartedly. "You know they've
increased my salary."

She shook her head. "No, I didn't. How should I? You don't realize it,"
she went on, dolefully, "but you're getting so you don't tell me the
least thing about your affairs nowadays."

Theron laughed aloud. "You ought to be grateful--such melancholy affairs
as mine have been till now," he declared--"that is, if it weren't absurd
to think such a thing." Then, more soberly, he explained: "No, my girl,
it is you who don't realize. I am carrying big projects in my mind--big,
ambitious thoughts and plans upon which great things depend. They no
doubt make me seem preoccupied and absent-minded; but it is a wife's
part to understand, and make allowances, and not intrude trifles which
may throw everything out of gear. Don't think I'm scolding, my girl. I
only speak to reassure you and--and help you to comprehend. Of course I
know that you wouldn't willingly embarrass my--my career."

"Of course not," responded Alice, dubiously; "but--but--"

"But what? Theron felt compelled by civility to say, though on the
instant he reproached himself for the weakness of it.

"Well--I hardly know how to say it," she faltered, "but it was nicer in
the old days, before you bothered your head about big projects, and
your career, as you call it, and were just a good, earnest, simple young
servant of the Lord. Oh, Theron!" she broke forth suddenly, with tearful
zeal, "I get sometimes lately almost scared lest you should turn out to
be a--a BACKSLIDER!"

The husband sat upright, and hardened his countenance. But yesterday the
word would have had in it all sorts of inherited terrors for him. This
morning's dawn of a new existence revealed it as merely an empty and
stupid epithet.

"These are things not to be said," he admonished her, after a moment's
pause, and speaking with carefully measured austerity. "Least of all are
they to be said to a clergyman--by his wife."

It was on the tip of Alice's tongue to retort, "Better by his