.

"What a Darby and Joan we are getting to be!" he remarked one night as
we sat one on each side of the library table, reading. His mother, as
was her custom, had gone to bed early in the evening.

"Yes! Isn't it nice?" I returned, smiling at him.

"Ripping!" Dicky agreed enthusiastically. Then, reflectively,
"Funniest thing about it is the way I cotton to this domestic stunt.
If anyone had told me before I met you that I should ever stand for
this husband-reading-to-knitting-wife sort of thing I should have
bought him a ticket to Matteawan, pronto."

He stopped and frowned heavily at me, in mimic disapproval.

"Picture all spoiled," he declared, sighing. "You are not knitting.
Why, oh, why are you not knitting?"

"Because I never shall knit," I returned, laughing, "at least not in
the evening while you are reading. That sort of thing never did appeal
to me. Either the wife who has to knit or sew or darn in the evening
is too inefficient to get all her work done in daylight, or she has
too much work to do. In the first case, her husband ought to teach her
efficiency; in the second place, he ought to help do the sewing or the
darning. Then they could both read."

"Listen to the feminist?" carolled Dicky; then with mock severity:
"Of course, I am to infer, madam, that my stockings are all properly
darned?"

"Your inference is eminently correct," demurely. "Your mother darned
them today."

What I had told him was true. His mother had seen me looking over the
stockings after they were washed, and had insisted on darning Dicky's.
I saw that she longed to do some little personal service for her boy,
and willingly handed them over.

Dicky threw back his head and laughed heartily. Then his face sobered,
and he came round to my side of the table and sat down on the arm of
my chair.

"Speaking of mother," he said, rumpling my hair caressingly, "I want
to tell you, sweetheart, that you've made an awful hit with me the way
you've taken care of her. Nobody knows better than I how trying she
can be, and you've been just as sweet and kind to her as if she were
the most tractable person on earth."

He put his arms around me and bent his face to mine.

"Pretty nice and comfy this being married to each other, isn't it?"

"Very nice, indeed," I agreed, nestling closer to him.

My heart echoed the words. In fact, it seemed almost too good to
be true, this quiet domestic cove into which our marital bark had
drifted. The