toddling, self-appointed child commissioner to find his way in unwatched
moments to the play-ground of some other toddler, and so plant the good
seed of neighbor acquaintanceship.

This neighbor passed four times a day. A man of fortune, aged a hale
sixty or so, who came and stood on the corner, and sometimes even rested
a foot on Mary's door-step, waiting for the Prytania omnibus, and who,
on his returns, got down from the omnibus step a little gingerly, went
by Mary's house, and presently shut himself inside a very ornamental
iron gate, a short way up St. Mary street. A child would have made him
acquainted. Even as it was, they did not escape his silent notice. It
was pleasant for him, from whose life the early dew had been dried away
by a well-risen sun, to recall its former freshness by glimpses of this
pair of young beginners. It was like having a bird's nest under his
window.

John, stepping backward from his door one day, saying a last word to his
wife, who stood on the threshold, pushed against this neighbor as he was
moving with somewhat cumbersome haste to catch the stage, turned
quickly, and raised his hat.

"Pardon!"

The other uncovered his bald head and circlet of white, silken locks,
and hurried on to the conveyance.

"President of one of the banks down-town," whispered John.

That is the nearest they ever came to being acquainted. And even this
accident might not have occurred had not the man of snowy locks been
glancing at Mary as he passed instead of at his omnibus.

As he sat at home that evening he remarked:--

"Very pretty little woman that, my dear, that lives in the little house
at the corner; who is she?"

The lady responded, without lifting her eyes from the newspaper in which
she was interested; she did not know. The husband mused and twirled his
penknife between a finger and thumb.

"They seem to be starting at the bottom," he observed.

"Yes?"

"Yes; much the same as we did."

"I haven't noticed them particularly."

"They're worth noticing," said the banker.

He threw one fat knee over the other, and laid his head on the back of
his easy-chair.

The lady's eyes were still on her paper, but she asked:--

"Would you like me to go and see them?"

"No, no--unless you wish."

She dropped the paper into her lap with a smile and a sigh.

"Don't propose it. I have so much going to do"-- She paused, removed her
glasses, and fell to straightening the fringe of the lamp-mat. "