desires. He felt a comfort in irretrievably committing himself, and
exchanging the burden of indecision for the burden of responsibility.

"I don't know," said Fulkerson, as they walked back to his hotel
together, "but you might fix it up with that lone widow and her pretty
daughter to take part of their house here." He seemed to be reminded of
it by the fact of passing the house, and March looked up at its dark
front. He could not have told exactly why he felt a pang of remorse at
the sight, and doubtless it was more regret for having taken the
Grosvenor Green flat than for not having taken the widow's rooms. Still,
he could not forget her wistfulness when his wife and he were looking at
them, and her disappointment when they decided against them. He had
toyed, in, his after-talk to Mrs. March, with a sort of hypothetical
obligation they had to modify their plans so as to meet the widow's want
of just such a family as theirs; they had both said what a blessing it
would be to her, and what a pity they could not do it; but they had
decided very distinctly that they could not. Now it seemed to him that
they might; and he asked himself whether he had not actually departed as
much from their ideal as if he had taken board with the widow. Suddenly
it seemed to him that his wife asked him this, too.

"I reckon," said Fulkerson, "that she could have arranged to give you
your meals in your rooms, and it would have come to about the same thing
as housekeeping."

"No sort of boarding can be the same as house-keeping," said March. "I
want my little girl to have the run of a kitchen, and I want the whole
family to have the moral effect of housekeeping. It's demoralizing to
board, in every way; it isn't a home, if anybody else takes the care of
it off your hands."

"Well, I suppose so," Fulkerson assented; but March's words had a hollow
ring to himself, and in his own mind he began to retaliate his
dissatisfaction upon Fulkerson.

He parted from him on the usual terms outwardly, but he felt obscurely
abused by Fulkerson in regard to the Dryfooses, father and son. He did
not know but Fulkerson had taken an advantage of him in allowing him to
commit himself to their enterprise with out fully and frankly telling him
who and what his backer was; he perceived that with young Dryfoos as the
publisher and Fulkerson as the general director of the paper there might
be very little play for his own ideas of its conduct. Perhaps it was the