litting
headache. And as the weather was about to change she had shooting
pains like toothache through her toes the instant she thrust them into
her shoes. The elderly groom, believing he had a rich bride, was all
solicitude and infuriating attention. She waited until he had wrought
her to the proper pitch of fury. Then she said--in reply to some
remark of his:

"Yes, I shall rely upon you entirely. I want you to take absolute
charge of my affairs."

The tears sprang to his eyes. His weak old mouth, rapidly falling to
pieces, twisted and twitched with emotion. "I'll try to deserve your
confidence, darling," said he. "I've had large business experience--in
the way of investing carefully, I mean. I don't think your affairs
will suffer in my hands."

"Oh, I'm sure they'll not trouble you," said she in a sweet, sure tone
as the pains shot through her feet and her head. "You'll hardly notice
my little mite in your property." She pretended to reflect. "Let me
see--there's seven thousand left, but of course half of that is
Millie's."

"It must be very well invested," said he. "Those seven thousand shares
must be of the very best."

"Shares?" said she, with a gentle little laugh. "I mean dollars."

Presbury was about to lift a cup of cafe au lait to his lips. Instead,
he turned it over into the platter of eggs and bacon.

"We--Mildred and I," pursued his bride, "were left with only forty-odd
thousand between us. Of course, we had to live. So, naturally,
there's very little left."

Presbury was shaking so violently that his head and arms waggled like a
jumping-jack's. He wrapped his elegant white fingers about the arms of
his chair to steady himself. In a suffocated voice he said: "Do you
mean to say that you have only seven thousand dollars in the world?"

"Only half that," corrected she. "Oh, dear, how my head aches! Less
than half that, for there are some debts."

She was impatient for the explosion; the agony of her feet and head
needed outlet and relief. But he disappointed her. That was one of
the situations in which one appeals in vain to the resources of
language. He shrank and sank back in his chair, his jaw dropped, and
he vented a strange, imbecile cackling laugh. It was not an expression
of philosophic mirth, of sense of the grotesqueness of an anti-climax.
It was not an expression of any emotion whatever. It was simply a
signal from a mind temporarily dethroned.

"What are yo