g married to a good man.

Coffee, the beloved luxury they had so long renounced, was served with
that supper. But neither of them drank it. Arthur said he wasn't going to
be kept awake two nights running, and after that, Aggie's heart was too
sore to eat or drink anything. He commented bitterly on the waste. He said
he wondered how on earth they were going to pay the doctor's bills, at
that rate.

Aggie pondered. He had lain awake all night thinking of the doctor's
bills, had he? And yet that was just what they were to have no more of.
Anyhow, he had been kept awake; and, of course, that was enough to make
him irritable.

So Aggie thought she would soothe him to sleep. She remembered how he used
to go to sleep sometimes in the evenings when she played. And the music,
she reflected with her bitterness, would cost nothing.

But music, good music, costs more than anything; and Arthur was
fastidious. Aggie's fingers had grown stiff, and their touch had lost its
tenderness. Of their old tricks they remembered nothing, except to stumble
at a "stretchy" chord, a perfect bullfinch of a chord, bristling with
"accidentals," where in their youth they had been apt to shy. Arthur
groaned.

"Oh, Lord, there won't be a wink of sleep for either of us if you wake
that brat again. What on earth possesses you to strum?"

But Aggie was bent, just for the old love of it, and for a little
obstinacy, on conquering that chord.

"Oh, stop it!" he cried. "Can't you find something better to do?"

"Yes," said Aggie, trying to keep her mouth from working, "perhaps I could
find something."

Arthur looked up at her from under his eyebrows, and was ashamed.

She thought still of what she could do for him; and an inspiration came.
He had always loved to listen to her reading. Her voice had not suffered
as her fingers had; and there, in its old place on the shelf, was the
Browning he had given her.

"Would you like me to read to you?"

"Yes," he said, "if you're not too tired." He was touched by the face he
had seen, and by her pathetic efforts; but oh, he thought, if she would
only understand.

She seated herself in the old place opposite him, and read from where the
book fell open of its own accord.

"'O, lyric Love, half angel and half bird'"--

Her voice came stammering like a child's, choked with tenderness and many
memories--

"'And all a wonder and a wild desire--'"

"Oh no, I say, for Heaven's sake, Aggie, not that rot.