usband has ever seen or ever will see. _You_ can get
at the spark in the opal."

Griffith was comforted, as he often found himself comforted, under the
utterances of this wise one.

His desperation was toned down, and he was readier to hope for the best
and to feel warm at heart and grateful,--grateful for Dolly and the
tender thoughts that were bound up in his love for her. The tender
phantom Aimee's words had conjured up, stirred within his bosom a thrill
so loving and impassioned, that for the time the radiance seemed to
emanate from the very darkest of his clouds of disappointment and
discouragement. He was reminded that but for those very clouds the
girl's truth and faith would never have shone out so brightly. But for
their poverty and long probation, he could never have learned how much
she was ready to face for love's sake. And it was such an innocent
phantom, too, this bright little figure smiling upon him through the
darkness, with Dolly's own face, and Dolly's own saucy, fanciful ways,
and Dolly's own hands outstretched toward him. He quite plucked up
spirit.

"If Old Flynn could just be persuaded to give me a raise," he said; "it
would n't take much of an income for two people to live on."

"No," answered the wise one, feeling some slight misgivings, more on
the subject of the out-go than the income. "You might live on very
little--if you had it."

"Yes," said Griffith, apparently struck by the brilliancy of the
observation, "Dolly and I have said so often."

"Let me see," considered Aimee, "suppose we were to make a sort
of calculation. Give me your lead-pencil and a leaf out of your
pocket-book."

Griffith produced both at once. He had done it often enough before when
Dolly had been the calculator, and had made a half-serious joke of the
performance, counting up her figures on the tips of her fingers, and
making great professions of her knowledge of domestic matters; but
it was a different affair in Aimee's hands. Aimee was in earnest, and
bending over her scrap of paper, with two or three little lines on
her white forehead began to set things down with an air at once
business-like and vigorous, reading, the various items aloud.

"Rent, coals, taxes, food, wages,--you can't do your own washing, you
know,--clothes, etceteras. There it is, Griffith," the odd, tried look
settling in her eyes.

Griffith took the paper.

"Thank you," he remarked, resignedly, after he had glanced at it. "Just
fifty