for all the inhabitants, and the paint on
the furniture was scarcely dry. The little doll's house was almost ready
for further use.

I looked at the maid, but her face was expressionless. "Put it back,"
I said, ashamed to have surprised Mary's pretty secret, and I left the
house dejectedly, with a profound conviction that the little nursery
governess had hooked on to me again.

IV. A Night-Piece

There came a night when the husband was alone in that street waiting. He
can do nothing for you now, little nursery governess, you must fight it
out by yourself; when there are great things to do in the house the man
must leave. Oh, man, selfish, indelicate, coarse-grained at the best,
thy woman's hour has come; get thee gone.

He slouches from the house, always her true lover I do believe,
chivalrous, brave, a boy until to-night; but was he ever unkind to her?
It is the unpardonable sin now; is there the memory of an unkindness
to stalk the street with him to-night? And if not an unkindness, still
might he not sometimes have been a little kinder?

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a
little kinder than is necessary?

Poor youth, she would come to the window if she were able, I am sure,
to sign that the one little unkindness is long forgotten, to send you
a reassuring smile till you and she meet again; and, if you are not to
meet again, still to send you a reassuring, trembling smile.

Ah, no, that was for yesterday; it is too late now. He wanders the
streets thinking of her tonight, but she has forgotten him. In her great
hour the man is nothing to the woman; their love is trivial now.

He and I were on opposite sides of the street, now become familiar
ground to both of us, and divers pictures rose before me in which Mary
A---- walked. Here was the morning after my only entry into her house.
The agent had promised me to have the obnoxious notice-board removed,
but I apprehended that as soon as the letter announcing his intention
reached her she would remove it herself, and when I passed by in the
morning there she was on a chair and a foot-stool pounding lustily at it
with a hammer. When it fell she gave it such a vicious little kick.

There were the nights when her husband came out to watch for the
postman. I suppose he was awaiting some letter big with the fate of a
picture. He dogged the postman from door to door like an assassin or a
guardian angel; never had he the courage t