o do what is best for you, Ellen."

"I'd be best off if I was making you happy, Peter--and I'd feel such a
burden somehow, just boarding."

"The rents _are_ cheaper in the suburbs," Peter went so far as to admit.
It was all so inarticulate in him; how could he explain to Ellen the
feeling that he had, that settling down to a home with her would somehow
put an end to any dreams he had had of a home of his own, persistent but
unshaped visions that vanished before the sudden brightening of Ellen's
face at his least concession.

"We could have somebody in to clean," she reminded him, "and I hardly
ever have to be in bed now."

The fact was that Peter had the very place in mind; he had often walked
out there on Sundays from Blodgett's; he thought the neighbourhood had a
clean and healthy look. He went up on Tuesday to see what could be done
about it.

Lessing, who rented him the apartment, made the natural mistake about it
that Peter's age and his inexperience as a householder invited. He said
the neighbours were all a most desirable class of people, and Peter
could see for himself that the city was bound to build out that way in a
few years. As for what Pleasanton could do in the way of climate, well,
Lessing told him, with the air of being only a little less interested
than he credited Peter with being, look at the perambulators.

They were as fine a lot of wellfilled vehicles as could be produced by
any suburb anywhere, and Ellen for one was never tired of looking at
them. But Peter couldn't understand why Ellen insisted on walking home
from church Sunday morning the wrong way of the pavement.

"I suppose we do get in the way," she admitted after he had explained to
her that they wouldn't be crowded off so frequently if they moved with
the nurse-maid's parade and not against it, "but if we go this way we
can see all the little faces."

"I didn't know you cared so much for babies."

"Well, you see it isn't as if I was to have any of my own----" Something
in the tone with which she admitted the restraining fact of her
affliction brought out for Peter how she had fitted her life to it, like
a plant growing hardily out of a rock, climbing over and around it
without rancour or rebellion. As he turned now to look at her long,
plain face in the light of what had been going on in himself lately, he
recalled that the determining influence which had drawn her thick hair
into that unbecoming knot at the back of her neck ha