ry, and she
has enough to make up for what he can't do; and I would like to keep
the child here myself, but I somehow thought you didn't like the
idea."

Again Sylvia turned white, and stared at her husband almost with
horror. "I don't see why you think it is bound to happen," said she.

Henry laughed. "It doesn't take a very long head to think so."

"It sha'n't happen. That child ain't going to marry anybody."

"Sylvia, you don't mean that you want her to be an old maid!"

"It's the best thing for any girl, if she only thought so, to be an
old maid," said Sylvia.

Henry laughed a little. "That's a compliment to me."

"I ain't saying anything against you. I've been happy enough, and I
suppose I've been better off than if I'd stayed single; but Rose has
got enough to live on, and what any girl that's got enough to live on
wants to get married for beats me."

Henry laughed again, a little bitterly this time. "Then you wouldn't
have married me if you had had enough to live on?" he said.

Sylvia looked at him, and an odd, shamed tenderness came into her
elderly face. "There's no use talking about what wasn't, anyway,"
said she, and Henry understood.

After a little while Sylvia again brought up the subject of Horace
and Rose. She was evidently very uneasy about it. "I don't see why
you think because a young man and girl are in the same house anything
like that is bound to happen," said she.

"Well, perhaps not; maybe it won't," said Henry, soothingly. He saw
that it troubled Sylvia, and it had always been an unwritten maxim
with him that Sylvia should not be troubled if it could be helped. He
knew that he himself was about to trouble her, and why should she be
vexed, in addition, about an uncertainty, as possibly this incipient
love-affair might be. After all, why should it follow that because a
young man and a girl lived in the same house they should immediately
fall in love? And why should it not be entirely possible that they
might have a little love-making without any serious consequences?
Horace had presumably paid a little attention to girls before, and it
was very probable that Rose had received attention. Why bother about
such a thing as this when poor Sylvia would really be worried over
his, Henry's, return to his old, humble vocation?

For Henry, as he sat beside the window that pleasant afternoon, was
becoming more and more convinced it must happen. It seemed to him
that his longing was gradually s