utely none.
Wanning's cane, his hat, his topcoat, might go from beggar to beggar
and knock about in this world for another fifty years or so; but not
he.

In the late afternoon he never hurried to leave his office now.
Wonderful sunsets burned over the North River, wonderful stars
trembled up among the towers; more wonderful than anything he could
hurry away to. One of his windows looked directly down upon the
spire of Old Trinity, with the green churchyard and the pale
sycamores far below. Wanning often dropped into the church when he
was going out to lunch; not because he was trying to make his peace
with Heaven, but because the church was old and restful and
familiar, because it and its gravestones had sat in the same place
for a long while. He bought flowers from the street boys and kept
them on his desk, which his partners thought strange behavior, and
which Miss Doane considered a sign that he was failing.

But there were graver things than bouquets for Miss Doane and the
senior partner to ponder over.

The senior partner, McQuiston, in spite of his silvery hair and
mustache and his important church connections, had rich natural
taste for scandal.--After Mr. Wade went away for his vacation, in
May, Wanning took Annie Wooley out of the copying room, put her at a
desk in his private office, and raised her pay to eighteen dollars a
week, explaining to McQuiston that for the summer months he would
need a secretary. This explanation satisfied neither McQuiston nor
Miss Doane.

Annie was also paid for overtime, and although Wanning attended to
very little of the office business now, there was a great deal of
overtime. Miss Doane was, of course, 'above' questioning a chit like
Annie; but what was he doing with his time and his new secretary,
she wanted to know?

If anyone had told her that Wanning was writing a book, she would
have said bitterly that it was just like him. In his youth Wanning
had hankered for the pen. When he studied law, he had intended to
combine that profession with some tempting form of authorship. Had
he remained a bachelor, he would have been an unenterprising
literary lawyer to the end of his days. It was his wife's
restlessness and her practical turn of mind that had made him a
money-getter. His illness seemed to bring back to him the illusions
with which he left college.

As soon as his family were out of the way and he shut up the Orange
house, he began to dictate his autobiography to