ver on time. And please keep the price as it is, for I don't
pay you half enough for all your goodness to me."

Now under the impulse of his new resolution, and rather ashamed of his
former attitude in view of all her unremitting attentions, he resumed
his place at her table. Nor did he stop here. He taught her to broil a
chop over her coal fire by removing the stove lid--until then they had
been fried--and a new way with a rasher of bacon, using the carving-fork
instead of a pan. The clearing of the famous coffee-pot with an
egg--making the steaming mixture anew whenever wanted instead of letting
the dented old pot simmer away all day on the back of the stove--was
another innovation, making the evening meal just that much more
enjoyable, greatly to the delight of the hostess, who was prouder of her
boarder than of any other human being who had come into her life, except
John and Bobby.

These renewed intimacies opened his eyes to another phase of the life
about him, and he soon found himself growing daily more interested in
the sweet family relations of the small household.

"What do I care for what we haven't got," Kitty said to him one night
when some economies in the small household were being discussed. "I'm
better off than half the women who stop at my door in their carriages.
I got two arms, and I can sleep eight hours when I get the chance, and
John loves me and so does Bobby and so does my big white horse Jim.
There ain't one of them women as knows what it is to work for her man
and him to work for her." All the other married couples he had seen had
pulled apart, or lived apart--mentally, at least. These two seemed bound
together heart and soul.

More than once he contrived to stop at the Studio Building, where both
of the old fellows were almost always to be found sitting side by side,
and, picking them up bodily, he had set them down on hard chairs in a
rathskeller on Sixth Avenue, where they had all dined together, the old
fellows warmed up with two beers apiece. This done, he had escorted them
back, seen them safely up-stairs, and returned to his lodgings.

It was after one of these mild diversions that, before going to his
room, he pushed open the door of the Clearys' sitting-room with a cheery
"May I come in, Mistress Kitty?"

"Oh, but I'm glad to see ye!" was the joyous answer. "I was sayin' to
myself: 'Maybe ye'd come in before he went.' Here's Father Cruse I been
tellin' ye about--and, Father, he