" she warned him. "I
like to see the people."

He smiled. "Just as you like."

She laughed to herself while Rebecca was preparing her for bed,
tickled by the thought of the "fire-eating" Harvey. In bed, however,
with the lights out, she found that sleep would not come as readily as
she had expected. Instead her mind was vividly awake and full of
reflections. She was thinking of the two in Tarrytown asleep for hours
and snugly complacent. Her thoughts suddenly leaped back to the old
days in Blakeville when she was the Town Marshal's daughter and he the
all-important dispenser of soft drinks at Davis'. How she had hung on
his every word, quip, or jest! How she had looked forward to the
nights when he was to call! How she hated the other girls who divided
with her the attentions of this popular young beau! And how different
everything was now in these days of affluence and adulation! She
caught herself counting how many days it had been since she had seen
her husband, the one-time hero of her dreams. What a home-body he was!
What a change there was in him! In the old Blakeville days he was the
liveliest chap in town. He was never passive for more than a minute at
a stretch. Going, gadding, frivolling, flirting--that was the old
Harvey. And now look at him!

Those old days were far, far away, so far that she was amazed that she
was able to recall them. She had sung in the church choir and at all
of the local entertainments. The praise of the Blakeville _Patriot_
was as sweet incense to her, the placid applause of the mothers'
meetings more riotous than anything she could imagine in these days
when audiences stamped and clapped and whistled till people in the
streets outside the theatre stopped and envied those who were inside.

And then the days of actual courtship; she tried to recall how and
when they began. She married Harvey in the little church on the hill.
Everybody in town was there. She could close her eyes now and see
Harvey in the new checked suit he had ordered from Chicago especially
for the occasion, a splendid innovation that caused more than one
Lotharial eye to gleam with envy.

Then came the awakening. The popular drug clerk, for all his show of
prosperity and progress, had not saved a cent in all his years of
labour, nor was there any likelihood of his salary ever being large
enough to supply the wants of two persons. They went to live with his
mother, and it was not long before he was wearing the ch