p the aisle.

Buck, listening to her laughing, triumphant account of her hairbreadth,
harum-scarum adventure, frowned before he smiled.

"Emma, how could you do it! At least, why didn't you send back for me
first?"

Emma smiled a little tremulously.

"Don't be angry. You see, dear boy, I've only been your wife for a
week. But I've been Featherloom petticoats for over fifteen years.
It's a habit."

Just how strong and fixed a habit, she proved to herself a little more
than a week later. It was the morning of their first breakfast in the
new apartment. You would have thought, to see them over their coffee
and eggs and rolls, that they had been breakfasting together thus for
years--Annie was so at home in her new kitchen; the deft little maid,
in her crisp white, fitted so perfectly into the picture. Perhaps the
thing that T. A. Buck said, once the maid left them alone, might have
given an outsider the cue.

"You remind me of a sweetpea, Emma. One of those crisp, erect,
golden-white, fresh, fragrant sweetpeas. I think it is the slenderest,
sweetest, neatest, trimmest flower in the world, so delicately set on
its stem, and yet so straight, so independent."

"T. A., you say such dear things to me!"

No; they had not been breakfasting together for years.

"I'm glad you're not one of those women that wears a frowsy, lacy,
ribbony, what-do-you-call-'em-boudoir-cap--down to breakfast. They
always make me think of uncombed hair. That's just one reason why I'm
glad."

"And I'm glad," said Emma, looking at his clear eyes and steady hand
and firm skin, "for a number of reasons. One of them is that you're
not the sort of man who's a grouch at breakfast."

When he had hat and coat and stick in hand, and had kissed her good-by
and reached the door and opened it, he came back again, as is the way
of bridegrooms. But at last the door closed behind him.

Emma sat there a moment, listening to his quick, light step down the
corridor, to the opening of the lift door, to its metallic closing.
She sat there, in the sunshiny dining-room, in her fresh, white morning
gown. She picked up her newspaper, opened it; scanned it, put it down.
For years, now, she had read her newspaper in little gulps on the way
downtown in crowded subway or street-car. She could not accustom
herself to this leisurely scanning of the pages. She rose, went to the
window, came back to the table, stood there a moment, her eyes fixed on
someth