ing to the subject with a vigor of enjoyment inspiriting to
behold. "And, by the way, Dolly, I saw a small sofa at a place in town
which was just the right size to fit into a sort of alcove there is in
the front parlor."

"Did you inquire the price?" said Dolly.

"Well--no," cheerfully; "but I can, if you would like to know it. You
see, I had n't any money, and did n't know when I should have any, and
I felt rather discouraged at the time, and I had an idea the price would
make me feel worse, so I did not go in. But it was a comfortable, plump
little affair, covered with green,--the sort of thing I should like to
have in our house, when we have one. It would be so comfortable to throw
one's self down on to after a hard day's work, particularly if one had a
headache."

"Yes," said Dolly; and then, half unconsciously and quite in spite of
herself, the ghost of a sigh escaped her. She could not help wishing
things were a trifle more real sometimes, bright and whimsically
unworldly as she was.

"What did that mean?" Griffith asked her.

She wakened up, as it were, and looked as happy as ever in an instant,
creeping a trifle closer to him in her loving anxiety to blind him to
the presence of the little pain in her heart.

"Nothing," she said, briskly. And then--"We don't want much, do we,
Griffith?"

"No," said Griffith, a certain grim sense of humor getting the better of
him. "And we have n't got it."

She laughed outright at the joke quite enjoyably. Even the grimmest of
jocosities wins its measure of respect in Vagabondia, and besides,
her laugh removed the impression her sigh might have created. She was
herself again at once.

"Never mind," she said. (It was always "never mind.") "Never mind, it
will all come right in the end. Humble merit _must_ be rewarded, and if
humble merit isn't, we can only console ourselves with the reasonable
reflection that there must be something radically wrong with the state
of society. Who knows whether you may not 'get into something,' as Phil
says, which may be twenty times better than anything Old Flynn can give
you!" with characteristic Vagabondian hopefulness.

Just at this juncture Phil himself entered, or, rather, half entered,
for he only put his head--a comely, curled head surmounted by a
disreputable velvet cap--half into the room.

"Oh, you are here, are you?" he said. "You are the fellow I want. I am
just touching up something I want to show you. Come into the stud