and toward these; but when Bartley, after a comprehensive glance
at them, gave his whole attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where
different tints of the paint showed through flawless glass, Lapham
smiled, and waited in pleased expectation.

"Hello!" said Bartley. "That's pretty!"

"Yes," assented Lapham, "it is rather nice. It's our latest thing, and
we find it takes with customers first-rate. Look here!" he said, taking
down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label.

Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked at Lapham and
smiled.

"After HER, of course," said Lapham. "Got it up and put the first of
it on the market her last birthday. She was pleased."

"I should think she might have been," said Bartley, while he made a
note of the appearance of the jars.

"I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said Lapham
dubiously.

"That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing else does.
Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel." It was in the dawn of
Bartley's prosperity on the Boston Events, before his troubles with
Marcia had seriously begun.

"Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile another of the vast
majority of married Americans; a few underrate their wives, but the
rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability. "Well," he
added, "we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?"

"We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place."

"Well, we've all got to commence that way," suggested Lapham
consolingly.

"Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. I expect to be
under a roof of my own on Clover Street before long. I suppose," said
Bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass grow
under your feet much after you found out what was in your paint-mine?"

"No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at
Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in the
first days of his married life. "I went right back to Lumberville and
sold out everything, and put all I could rake and scrape together into
paint. And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back about
HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!"

Bartley laughed. "That's the sort most of us marry."

"No, we don't," said Lapham. "Most of us marry silly little girls
grown up to LOOK like women."

"Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, as if upon second
thought.

"If it hadn'