een different.

His attitude towards her was thoughtfulness itself. Hardly ever was he
absent from her, even for a day, that he did not bring her some little
present, some little keep-sake--or even a bunch of flowers--when he
returned in the evening. The anniversaries--Christmas, their wedding
day, her birthday--he always observed with great eclat. He took a
holiday from his business, surprised her with presents under her
pillow, or her dinner-plate, and never failed to take her to the
theatre in the evening.

However, it was not only Jadwin's virtues that endeared him to his
wife. He was no impeccable hero in her eyes. He was tremendously human.
He had his faults, his certain lovable weaknesses, and it was precisely
these traits that Laura found so adorable.

For one thing, Jadwin could be magnificently inconsistent. Let him set
his mind and heart upon a given pursuit, pleasure, or line of conduct
not altogether advisable at the moment, and the ingenuity of the
excuses by which he justified himself were monuments of elaborate
sophistry. Yet, if later he lost interest, he reversed his arguments
with supreme disregard for his former words.

Then, too, he developed a boyish pleasure in certain unessential though
cherished objects and occupations, that he indulged extravagantly and
to the neglect of things, not to say duties, incontestably of more
importance.

One of these objects was the "Thetis." In every conceivable particular
the little steam yacht was complete down to the last bolt, the last
coat of varnish; but at times during their summer vacations, when
Jadwin, in all reason, should have been supervising the laying out of
certain unfinished portions of the "grounds"--supervision which could
be trusted to no subordinate--he would be found aboard the "Thetis,"
hatless, in his shirt-sleeves, in solemn debate with the grey MacKenny
and--a cleaning rag, or monkey-wrench, or paint brush in his
hand--tinkering and pottering about the boat, over and over again.
Wealthy as he was, he could have maintained an entire crew on board
whose whole duty should have been to screw, and scrub, and scour. But
Jadwin would have none of it. "Costs too much," he would declare, with
profound gravity. He had the self-made American's handiness with
implements and paint brushes, and he would, at high noon and under a
murderous sun, make the trip from the house to the dock where the
"Thetis" was moored, for the trivial pleasure of tighte