n apprenticeship of only six weeks,
during which period George was to receive fifteen dollars a week; after
that he would get twenty-eight. This settled the apartment question, and
Fanny was presently established in a greater contentment than she had
known for a long time. Early every morning she made something she called
(and believed to be) coffee for George, and he was gallant enough not
to undeceive her. She lunched alone in her "kitchenette," for George's
place of employment was ten miles out of town on an interurban
trolley-line, and he seldom returned before seven. Fanny found partners
for bridge by two o'clock almost every afternoon, and she played until
about six. Then she got George's "dinner clothes" out for him--he
maintained this habit--and she changed her own dress. When he arrived
he usually denied that he was tired, though he sometimes looked tired,
particularly during the first few months; and he explained to her
frequently--looking bored enough with her insistence--that his work was
"fairly light, and fairly congenial, too." Fanny had the foggiest idea
of what it was, though she noticed that it roughened his hands and
stained them. "Something in those new chemical works," she explained to
casual inquirers. It was not more definite in her own mind.

Respect for George undoubtedly increased within her, however, and
she told him she'd always had a feeling he might "turn out to be a
mechanical genius, or something." George assented with a nod, as the
easiest course open to him. He did not take a hand at bridge after
dinner: his provisions' for Fanny's happiness refused to extend that
far, and at the table d'hote he was a rather discouraging boarder. He
was considered "affected" and absurdly "up-stage" by the one or two
young men, and the three or four young women, who enlivened the elderly
retreat; and was possibly less popular there than he had been elsewhere
during his life, though he was now nothing worse than a coldly polite
young man who kept to himself. After dinner he would escort his aunt
from the table in some state (not wholly unaccompanied by a leerish wink
or two from the wags of the place) and he would leave her at the door
of the communal parlours and card rooms, with a formality in his bow of
farewell which afforded an amusing contrast to Fanny's always voluble
protests. (She never failed to urge loudly that he really must come and
play, just this once, and not go hiding from everybody in his