certainly didn't jar him with any merriment, ma'am."

"What were the doctors thinking about?" demanded Phyllis indignantly.

"Well, ma'am, they did all sorts of things to poor Mr. Allan for the
first year or so. And then, as nothing helped, and they couldn't find
out what was wrong to have paralyzed him so, he begged to have them
stopped hurting him. So we haven't had one for the past five years."

"I think a masseur and a wheel-chair are the next things to get," said
Phyllis decisively. "And remember, Wallis, there's something the matter
with Mr. Allan's shutters. They won't always close the sunshine out as
they should."

Wallis almost winked, if an elderly, mutton-chopped servitor can be
imagined as winking.

"No, ma'am," he promised. "Something wrong with 'em. I'll remember,
ma'am."

Phyllis went singing on down the sunny old house, swinging her colored
muslin skirts and prancing a little with sheer joy of being twenty-five,
and prettily dressed, with a dear house all her own, and--yes--a dear
Allan a little her own, too! Doing well for a man what another woman has
done badly has a perennial joy for a certain type of woman, and this was
what Phyllis was in the very midst of. She pranced a little more, and
came almost straight up against a long old mirror with gilt cornices,
which had come with the house and was staying with it. Phyllis stopped
and looked critically at herself.

"I haven't taken time yet to be pretty," she reminded the girl in the
glass, and began then and there to take account of stock, by way of
beginning. Why--a good deal had done itself! Her hair had been washed
and sunned and sunned and washed about every ten minutes since she had
been away from the library. It was springy and three shades more golden.
She had not been rushing out in all weathers unveiled, nor washing
hastily with hard water and cheap library soap eight or ten times a day,
because private houses are comparatively clean places. So her complexion
had been getting back, unnoticed, a good deal of its original country
rose-and-cream, with a little gold glow underneath. And the tired
heaviness was gone from her eyelids, because she had scarcely used her
eyes since she had married Allan--there had been too much else to do!
The little frown-lines between the brows had gone, too, with the need of
reading-glasses and work under electricity. She was more rounded, and
her look was less intent. The strained Liberry Teacher look was g