"Grace!" he cried. "You're crying!"

She raised her face. "I've got a headache, a dreadful headache, Ned."

"A headache?" he repeated, in surprise and incredulity.

He pulled a chair close to hers. Later, as he cast his eye over the
zone of light shed by the dull red panes, he saw that a low table had
been drawn close to the stove, and that it was burdened with many
small cups and plates of uncut tea-cake. He remembered that the day
was Wednesday, and that his wife received on Wednesdays.

"Who was here to-day, Gracie?" he asked.

From his shoulder there came a mumble, "Mrs. Twelve."

"Was she--um," he said. "Why--didn't Anna Hagenthorpe come over?"

The mumble from his shoulder continued, "She wasn't well enough."

Glancing down at the cups, Trescott mechanically counted them. There
were fifteen of them. "There, there," he said. "Don't cry, Grace.
Don't cry."

The wind was whining round the house, and the snow beat aslant upon
the windows. Sometimes the coal in the stove settled with a crumbling
sound, and the four panes of mica flashed a sudden new crimson. As he
sat holding her head on his shoulder, Trescott found himself
occasionally trying to count the cups. There were fifteen of them.

------

THE BLUE HOTEL

I

The Palace Hotel at Fort Romper was painted a light blue, a shade that
is on the legs of a kind of heron, causing the bird to declare its
position against any background. The Palace Hotel, then, was always
screaming and howling in a way that made the dazzling winter landscape
of Nebraska seem only a gray swampish hush. It stood alone on the
prairie, and when the snow was falling the town two hundred yards away
was not visible. But when the traveller alighted at the railway
station he was obliged to pass the Palace Hotel before he could come
upon the company of low clapboard houses which composed Fort Romper,
and it was not to be thought that any traveller could pass the Palace
Hotel without looking at it. Pat Scully, the proprietor, had proved
himself a master of strategy when he chose his paints. It is true that
on clear days, when the great trans-continental expresses, long lines
of swaying Pullmans, swept through Fort Romper, passengers were
overcome at the sight, and the cult that knows the brown-reds and the
subdivisions of the dark greens of the East expressed shame, pity,
horror, in a laugh. But to the citizens of this prairie town and to
the people who would naturally st