window was not
closed, but it sent out no more light. The song was not heard, and many
small, faint signs gave indication that anxiety had come to be a guest
in the little house. At evening the wife was seen in her front door and
about its steps, watching in a new, restless way for her husband's
coming; and when he came it could be seen, all the way from those upper
windows, where one or two faces appeared now and then, that he was
troubled and care-worn. There were two more days like this one; but at
the end of the fourth the wife read good tidings in her husband's
countenance. He handed her a newspaper, and pointed to a list of
departing passengers.

"They're gone!" she exclaimed.

He nodded, and laid off his hat. She cast her arms about his neck, and
buried her head in his bosom. You could almost have seen Anxiety flying
out at the window. By morning the widows knew of a certainty that the
cloud had melted away.

In the counting-room one evening, as Richling said good-night with
noticeable alacrity, one of his employers, sitting with his legs crossed
over the top of a desk, said to his partner:--

"Richling works for his wages."

"That's all," replied the other; "he don't see his interests in ours any
more than a tinsmith would, who comes to mend the roof."

The first one took a meditative puff or two from his cigar, tipped off
its ashes, and responded:--

"Common fault. He completely overlooks his immense indebtedness to the
world at large, and his dependence on it. He's a good fellow, and
bright; but he actually thinks that he and the world are starting even."

"His wife's his world," said the other, and opened the Bills Payable
book. Who will say it is not well to sail in an ocean of love? But the
Richlings were becalmed in theirs, and, not knowing it, were satisfied.

Day in, day out, the little wife sat at her window, and drove her
needle. Omnibuses rumbled by; an occasional wagon or cart set the dust
a-flying; the street venders passed, crying the praises of their goods
and wares; the blue sky grew more and more intense as weeks piled up
upon weeks; but the empty repetitions, and the isolation, and, worst of
all, the escape of time,--she smiled at all, and sewed on and crooned
on, in the sufficient thought that John would come, each time, when only
hours enough had passed away forever.

Once she saw Dr. Sevier's carriage. She bowed brightly, but he--what
could it mean?--he lifted his hat with such a