will mind the leather smell?" concluded Henry.

"I wouldn't worry about that. There is nothing very disagreeable
about it," Horace replied, laughing.

"I will always change my coat and wash my hands real particular
before I set down to the table," said Henry, wistfully. Then he
added, after a second's hesitation: "You don't think she will think
any the less of me? You don't suppose she won't be willing to live in
the house because I work in the shop?"

"You mean Rose--Miss Fletcher?"

"Yes; of course she's been brought up different. She don't know
anything about people's working with their hands. She's been brought
up to think they're beneath her. I suppose it's never entered into
the child's head that she would live to set at the same table with a
man who works in a shoe-shop. You don't suppose it will set her
against me?"

"I think even if she has been brought up differently, as you say,
that she has a great deal of sense," replied Horace. "I don't think
you need to worry about that."

"I'm glad you don't. I guess it would about break Sylvia's heart to
lose her now, and I've got so I set a good deal by the child myself.
Mr. Allen, I want to ask you something."

Henry paused, and Horace waited.

"I want to ask you if you've noticed anything queer about Sylvia
lately," Henry said, at last.

Horace looked at him. "Do you mean in her looks or her manners?"

"Both."

Horace hesitated in his turn. "Now you speak of it--" he began.

"Well," said Henry, "speak out just what you think."

"I have not been sure that there was anything definite," Horace said,
slowly. "I have not been sure that it was not all imagination on my
part."

"That's just the way I've been feeling," Henry said, eagerly. "What
is it that you've been noticing?"

"I told you I am not sure that it is not all imagination, but--"

"What?"

"Well, sometimes your wife has given me the impression that she was
brooding over something that she was keeping entirely to herself. She
has had a look as if she had her eyes turned inward and was worrying
over what she saw. I don't know that you understand what I mean by
that?"

Henry nodded. "That's just the way Sylvia's been looking to me."

"I don't know but she looks as well as ever."

"She's grown thin."

"Maybe she has. Sometimes I have thought that, but what I have
noticed has been something intangible in her manner and expression,
that I thought was there one minute and was not at all s