ess as childish and nonsensical, but they were happy in the
indulgence of it, at all events, and surely they might have been engaged
in a less tender and more worldly pastime. There were other people,
perhaps, weak and imprudent themselves it may be, who would have seen a
touch of simple pathos in this unconsciously shown faith in Fortune and
her not too kindly moods.

"Old Flynn ought to raise my salary, you know, Dolly," said Griffith. "I
work hard enough for him, confound him!" somewhat irrelevantly, but with
laudable and not unamiable vigor. He meant no harm to "Old Flynn;" he
would have done a good-natured thing for him at any moment, the mild
expletive was simply the result of adopted custom. "There is n't a
fellow in the place who does as much as I do. I worked from seven in
the morning till midnight every day last week, and I wrote half his
editorials for him, and nobody knows he does n't get them up himself. If
he would only give me two hundred instead of one, just see how we could
live."

"We could live on a hundred and fifty," put in Dolly, with an air of
practical speculation which did her credit, "if we were economical."

"Well, say a hundred and fifty, then," returned Griffith, quite as
seriously, "for we should be economical. Say a hundred and fifty. It
would be nothing to him,--confound him!--but it would be everything in
the world to us. That house in the suburbs was only thirty pounds,
taxes and all, and it was just the very thing we should want if we were
married."

"How many rooms?" asked Dolly.

"Six, and kitchen and cupboards and all that sort of contrivances. I
asked particularly--went to see the landlord to inquire and see what
repairing he would do if we wanted the place. There is a garden of a
few yards in the front, too, and one or two rose-bushes. I don't know
whether they ever bloom, but if they do, you could wear them in your
hair. I thought of that the minute I saw them. The first time I saw you,
Dolly, you had a rose in your hair, and I remember thinking I had never
seen a flower worn in the same way. Other girls do n't wear things as
you wear them somehow or other."

Dolly acknowledged the compliment with a laugh and a coaxing,
patronizing little squeeze of his arm. .

"You think they don't," she said, "you affectionate old fellow, that is
it. Well, and what did the landlord say? Would he beautify?"

"Well, yes, I think he would if the matter was pressed," said Griffith,
return