rivations which this must
involve; but when Fulkerson came to see March rather late the night of
the publication day, she nobly told him that if the worst came to the
worst she could only have the kindliest feeling toward him, and should
not regard him as in the slightest degree responsible.

"Oh, hold on, hold on!" he protested. "You don't think we've made a
failure, do you?"

"Why, of course," she faltered, while March remained gloomily silent.

"Well, I guess we'll wait for the official count, first. Even New York
hasn't gone against us, and I guess there's a majority coming down to
Harlem River that could sweep everything before it, anyway."

"What do you mean, Fulkerson?" March demanded, sternly.

"Oh, nothing! Only, the 'News Company' has ordered ten thousand now; and
you know we had to give them the first twenty on commission."

"What do you mean?" March repeated; his wife held her breath.

"I mean that the first number is a booming success already, and that
it's going to a hundred thousand before it stops. That unanimity
and variety of censure in the morning papers, combined with the
attractiveness of the thing itself, has cleared every stand in the city,
and now if the favor of the country press doesn't turn the tide against
us, our fortune's made." The Marches remained dumb. "Why, look here!
Didn't I tell you those criticisms would be the making of us, when they
first began to turn you blue this morning, March?"

"He came home to lunch perfectly sick," said Mrs. Marcli; "and I
wouldn't let him go back again."

"Didn't I tell you so?" Fulkerson persisted.

March could not remember that he had, or that he had been anything but
incoherently and hysterically jocose over the papers, but he said, "Yes,
yes--I think so."

"I knew it from the start," said Fulkerson. "The only other person who
took those criticisms in the right spirit was Mother Dryfoos--I've just
been bolstering up the Dryfoos family. She had them read to her by Mrs.
Mandel, and she understood them to be all the most flattering prophecies
of success. Well, I didn't read between the lines to that extent, quite;
but I saw that they were going to help us, if there was anything in us,
more than anything that could have been done. And there was something
in us! I tell you, March, that seven-shooting self-cocking donkey of
a Beaton has given us the greatest start! He's caught on like a mouse.
He's made the thing awfully chic; it's jimmy; there's