therhood alternated with black fits of depression. She sang at her
work, to burst out into sudden tears.

Other things were not going well. Schwitter had given up his nursery
business; but the motorists who came to Hillfoot did not come back.
When, at last, he took the horse and buggy and drove about the country
for orders, he was too late. Other nurserymen had been before him;
shrubberies and orchards were already being set out. The second payment
on his mortgage would be due in July. By the middle of May they were
frankly up against it. Schwitter at last dared to put the situation into
words.

"We're not making good, Til," he said. "And I guess you know the reason.
We are too decent; that's what's the matter with us." There was no irony
in his words.

With all her sophistication, Tillie was vastly ignorant of life. He had
to explain.

"We'll have to keep a sort of hotel," he said lamely. "Sell to everybody
that comes along, and--if parties want to stay over-night--"

Tillie's white face turned crimson.

He attempted a compromise. "If it's bad weather, and they're married--"

"How are we to know if they are married or not?"

He admired her very much for it. He had always respected her. But the
situation was not less acute. There were two or three unfurnished rooms
on the second floor. He began to make tentative suggestions as to their
furnishing. Once he got a catalogue from an installment house, and tried
to hide it from her. Tillie's eyes blazed. She burned it in the kitchen
stove.

Schwitter himself was ashamed; but the idea obsessed him. Other people
fattened on the frailties of human nature. Two miles away, on the other
road, was a public house that had netted the owner ten thousand dollars
profit the year before. They bought their beer from the same concern.
He was not as young as he had been; there was the expense of keeping
his wife--he had never allowed her to go into the charity ward at the
asylum. Now that there was going to be a child, there would be three
people dependent upon him. He was past fifty, and not robust.

One night, after Tillie was asleep, he slipped noiselessly into his
clothes and out to the barn, where he hitched up the horse with nervous
fingers.

Tillie never learned of that midnight excursion to the "Climbing Rose,"
two miles away. Lights blazed in every window; a dozen automobiles were
parked before the barn. Somebody was playing a piano. From the bar came
the jingle of gl