t Marie Wakeman is the same as ever?" she
interrupted, with a flash of special interest. "Oh, William!"

"_She_ called me Billy." He laughed anew at the thought. "Upon my
word, Nettie, she beats anything I ever saw or heard of."

"Did she remind you of the time you kissed her?"

"Yes!" Their eyes met in amused recognition of the past.

"Is she as handsome as ever?"

"Um--yes--I think so. She isn't as pretty as you are."

"Oh, Will!" She blushed and dimpled.

"I declare, it is true!" He gazed at her with genuine admiration. "What
has come over you to-night, Nettie?--you look like a girl again."

"And you were not sorry when you saw her, that--that--"

"Sorry! I have been thinking all the way home how glad I was to have won
my sweet wife. But we mustn't stay shut up at home as much as we have;
it's not good for either of us. We are to be asked to join the whist
club--what do you think of that? You used to be a little card fiend once
upon a time, I remember."

She sighed. "It is so long since I have been anywhere! I'm afraid I
haven't any clothes, Will. I suppose I _might_--"

"What, dear?"

"Take the money I had put aside for Mary's next quarter's music lessons;
I do really believe a little rest would do her good."

"It would--it would," said Mr. Belden with suspicious eagerness. Mary's
after-dinner practising hour had tinged much of his existence with gall.
"I insist that Mary shall have a rest. And you shall join the reading
society now. Let us consider ourselves a little as well as the children;
it's really best for them, too. Haven't we immortal souls as well as
they? Can we expect them to seek the honey dew of paradise while they
see us contented to feed on the grass of the field?"

"You call yourself an orator!" she scoffed.

He drew her to him by one end of the long braid, and solemnly kissed
her. Then he went into the hall and took something from the pocket of
his mackintosh which he placed in his wife's hand--a little wooden dish
covered with a paper, through which shone a bright yellow substance--the
pound of butter, a lump of gleaming fairy gold, the quest of which had
changed a poor, commonplace existence into one scintillating with magic
possibilities.

Fairy gold, indeed, cannot be coined into marketable eagles. Mr. William
Belden might never achieve either the mayoralty or the cashiership, but
he had gained that of which money is only a trivial accessory. The
recognition of men, the flash