ling; "or if I'd been a glazier, or a whitewasher,
or a wood-sawyer, or"--he began to smile in a hard, unpleasant way,--"or
if I'd been anything but an American gentleman. But I wasn't, and I
didn't get the work!"

Mary sank into his lap, with her very best smile.

"John, if you hadn't been an American gentleman"--

"We should never have met," said John. "That's true; that's true." They
looked at each other, rejoicing in mutual ownership.

"But," said John, "I needn't have been the typical American
gentleman,--completely unfitted for prosperity and totally unequipped
for adversity."

"That's not your fault," said Mary.

"No, not entirely; but it's your calamity, Mary. O Mary! I little
thought"--

She put her hand quickly upon his mouth. His eye flashed and he frowned.

"Don't do so!" he exclaimed, putting the hand away; then blushed for
shame, and kissed her.

They went to bed. Bread would have put them to sleep. But after a long
time--

"John," said one voice in the darkness, "do you remember what Dr. Sevier
told us?"

"Yes, he said we had no right to commit suicide by starvation."

"If you don't get work to-morrow, are you going to see him?"

"I am."

In the morning they rose early.

During these hard days Mary was now and then conscious of one feeling
which she never expressed, and was always a little more ashamed of than
probably she need have been, but which, stifle it as she would, kept
recurring in moments of stress. Mrs. Riley--such was the thought--need
not be quite so blind. It came to her as John once more took his
good-by, the long kiss and the short one, and went breakfastless away.
But was Mrs. Riley as blind as she seemed? She had vision enough to
observe that the Richlings had bought no bread the day before, though
she did overlook the fact that emptiness would set them astir before
their usual hour of rising. She knocked at Mary's inner door. As it
opened a quick glance showed the little table that occupied the centre
of the room standing clean and idle.

"Why, Mrs. Riley!" cried Mary; for on one of Mrs. Riley's large hands
there rested a blue-edged soup-plate, heaping full of the food that goes
nearest to the Creole heart--_jambolaya_. There it was, steaming and
smelling,--a delicious confusion of rice and red pepper, chicken legs,
ham, and tomatoes. Mike, on her opposite arm, was struggling to lave his
socks in it.

"Ah!" said Mrs. Riley, with a disappointed lift of the head, "y