ing again. Sylvia watched him
furtively as she sewed. "You ain't reading that book at all," she
said. "I have been watching you, and you 'ain't turned a single page
since I spoke last."

"I don't see why I should," returned Henry. "I don't see why anybody
but a fool should ever open the book, to begin with."

"What is the book?"

Henry looked at the title-page. "It is Whatever, by Mrs. Fane
Raymond," he said, absently.

"I've heard it was a beautiful book."

"Most women would like it," said Henry. "It seems to be a lot written
about a fool woman that didn't know what she wanted, by another fool
woman who didn't know, either, and was born cross-eyed as to right
and wrong."

"Why, Henry Whitman, it ain't true!"

"I suppose it ain't."

"No book is true--that is, no story."

"If it ain't true, so much the less reason to tell such a pack of
stupid lies," said Henry. He closed the book with a snap.

"Why, Henry, ain't you going to finish it?"

"No, I ain't. I'm going back to the shop to work."

"Henry Whitman, you ain't!"

"Yes, I am. As for pottering round here, and trying to get up an
interest in things I ought to have begun instead of ended in, and
setting round reading books that I can't keep my mind on, and if I
do, just get madder and madder, I won't. I'm going back to work with
my hands the way I've been working the last forty years, and then I
guess I'll get my mind out of leading-strings."

"Henry Whitman, be you crazy?"

"No, but I shall be if I set round this way much longer."

"You don't need to do a mite of work."

"You don't suppose it's the money I'm thinking about! It's the work."

"What will folks say?"

"I don't care what they say."

"Henry Whitman, I thought I knew you, but I declare it seems as if I
have never known you at all," Sylvia said. She looked at him with her
puzzled, troubled eyes, in which tears were gathering. She was still
very pale.

A sudden pity for her came over Henry. After all, he ought to try to
make his position clear to her. "Sylvia," he said, "what do you think
you would do, after all these years of housekeeping, if you had to
stand in a shoe-shop, from morning till night, at a bench cutting
leather?"

Sylvia stared at him. "Me?"

"Yes, you."

"Why, you know I couldn't do it, Henry Whitman!"

"Well, no more can I stand such a change in my life. I can't go to
farming and setting around after forty years in a shoe-shop, any more
than you can work in