Of
course, if you think they're in need of a friend; but from your
description"--

"No," he answered, quickly, "not at all. They've friends, no doubt.
Everything about them has a neat, happy look. That's what attracted my
notice. They've got friends, you may depend." He ceased, took up a
pamphlet, and adjusted his glasses. "I think I saw a sofa going in there
to-day as I came to dinner. A little expansion, I suppose."

"It was going out," said the only son, looking up from a story-book.

But the banker was reading. He heard nothing, and the word was not
repeated. He did not divine that a little becalmed and befogged bark,
with only two lovers in her, too proud to cry "Help!" had drifted just
yonder upon the rocks, and, spar by spar and plank by plank, was
dropping into the smooth, unmerciful sea.

Before the sofa went there had gone, little by little, some smaller
valuables.

"You see," said Mary to her husband, with the bright hurry of a wife
bent upon something high-handed, "we both have to have furniture; we
must have it; and I don't have to have jewelry. Don't you see?"

"No, I"--

"Now, John!" There could be but one end to the debate; she had
determined that. The first piece was a bracelet. "No, I wouldn't pawn
it," she said. "Better sell it outright at once."

But Richling could not but cling to hope and to the adornments that had
so often clasped her wrists and throat or pinned the folds upon her
bosom. Piece by piece he pawned them, always looking out ahead with
strained vision for the improbable, the incredible, to rise to his
relief.

"Is _nothing_ going to happen, Mary?"

Yes; nothing happened--except in the pawn-shop.

So, all the sooner, the sofa had to go.

"It's no use talking about borrowing," they both said. Then the bureau
went. Then the table. Then, one by one, the chairs. Very slyly it was
all done, too. Neighbors mustn't know. "Who lives there?" is a question
not asked concerning houses as small as theirs; and a young man, in a
well-fitting suit of only too heavy goods, removing his winter hat to
wipe the standing drops from his forehead; and a little blush-rose
woman at his side, in a mist of cool muslin and the cunningest of
millinery,--these, who always paused a moment, with a lost look, in
the vestibule of the sepulchral-looking little church on the corner of
Prytania and Josephine streets, till the sexton ushered them in, and who
as often contrived, with no end of ingenuity, des