his rose, stepped back to survey it, and raised
to his eyes her own joyous, honest blue eyes, which still were as
candid as a nice child's. Jim Fairfax, keenly alive to the delight of
it, even after six months of marriage, kissed her again.

"You know, Jim," said Susanna, when they were presently sauntering with
their load of roses toward the house and breakfast, "apropos of this
new dress, I believe I put it on just BECAUSE there was no real reason
for it. It is so delightful sometimes to get into dainty petties, and
silk stockings, and a darling new gown, just as a matter of course! All
my life, you know, I've had just one good outfit at a time, and
sometimes less than that, and all the things I wore every day were so
awfully plain--!"

"I know, my darling," Jim said, a little gravely. For he was always
sorry to remember that there had been long years of poverty and
struggle in Susanna's life before the day when he had found her, an
underpaid librarian in a dark old law library, in a dark old street.
Susanna, buoyant, ambitious, and overworked, had never stopped in her
hard daily round long enough to consider herself pitiful, but she could
look back from her rose garden now to the days before she knew Jim, and
join him in a little shudder of reminiscence.

"I don't believe a long, idle day will ever seem anything but a joyous
holiday to me," she said now. "It seems so curious still, not to be
expected anywhere every morning!"

"Well, you may as well get used to it," Jim told her smilingly. But a
few minutes later, when Susanna was busy with the coffee-pot, he looked
up from a letter to say: "Here's a job for you, after all, to-day, Sue!
This--" and he flattened the crackling sheets beside his plate, "this
is from old Thayer."

"Thayer himself?" Susanna echoed appreciatively. For old Whitman
Thayer, in whose hands lay the giving of contracts far larger than any
that had as yet been handled by Jim or his senior partners in the young
firm of Reid, Polk & Fairfax, Architects, was naturally an enormously
important figure in his and Susanna's world. They spoke of Thayer
nearly every night, Jim reporting to his interested wife that Thayer
had "come in," or "hadn't come in," that Thayer had "seemed pleased,"
that Thayer had "jumped" on this, or had "been tickled to death" with
that; and the Fairfax domestic barometer varied accordingly.

"Go ON, Jim," said Susanna, in suspense.

"Why, it seems that his wife--she's awf