the old-time winding staircase. "Isn't this
old hall delightful, now? I never realized the possibilities of the
house, with this part closed so long."

"One more peep at the living-room, and then we'll go. Isn't it just like
Ellen? Such a charming, quiet room, without the least bit of ostentation,
yet simply breathing beauty and refinement. She is the most wonderful
shopper I know. She made every dollar Red furnished go twice as far as I
could. I don't suppose he would let her spend a penny of her own on this
house."

"He's too busy to know or care what she does--till he sees it. I'll
venture she has slipped in a penny or two. That magnificent piano
is hers, you know,--and two or three pieces of furniture. All he'll
realize is that it's delightful and that she's in it. It's all so funny,
anyhow,--this bringing home a bride and having her fall to work to
furnish her own nest."

"She's enjoyed it. I'd like to be on the scene to-night, when she shows
it to him."

"No chance of that. When Red does get her to himself for ten minutes he
quite plainly prefers to have the rest of us depart. Have you noticed?"

"Yes, indeed. I only hope that state of things will last." And Winifred
smiled and sighed at once, as if she were skeptical concerning of the
permanency of married bliss.

Office-hours were full ones that evening, and it was quite nine o'clock
before R.P. Burns, M.D. closed the door on the last of his patients. The
moment he was free he turned to Miss Mathewson, his office nurse, with a
deep breath of relief.

"Let's put out the lights and call it off," he said. "Run home and get an
hour to yourself before bedtime, and never mind finishing the books. Do
you know,"--he was smiling down at her, where she sat, a trim white
figure at her desk, an assistant who had been his right hand for nine
years, and who perhaps knew his moods and tempers better than anybody in
the world, though he did not at all realize this,--"do you know, I find
it harder to settle down to work again than I thought I should? Curious,
isn't it?"

"Not at all curious, Doctor Burns." Miss Mathewson spoke in her usual
quiet tone, smiling in return. "It is distracting, even to me, to know
that a person so lovely as your wife is under the same roof."

This was much for this most reserved associate of his to say, and Burns
recognized it. He regarded her with interested astonishment. "So she's
got you, too!" he ejaculated. "I'm mighty glad of that, f