in' one of them for myself,
some-day." But his heart ached. And when that ache became so leaden
that he couldn't endure it any longer in silence, he carried it to the
one person in his life who was best calculated to understand.
Diffidently he broached the subject with Miss Sarah, approaching it in
a roundabout fashion least likely to deceive that bright-eyed little
lady.

"Garry is saving his money against the fatal day," he laughed one
night. "He has become a rank miser! Joe says he goes for days at a
time, borrowing his tobacco, and he won't play anything but penny-ante
now, when he can be coaxed to play at all!"

Miss Sarah was too kind to look at him directly that evening.

"The regeneration of Garry is one of the things which had made my life
most happy," she answered. And then, paving the way for what she knew
was on his mind. "I suppose you will be surprising us yourself, one of
these days. And no doubt you'll be just as happily positive as Garry
is, that your choice is the only one in the world."

They were alone in the big living-room. Caleb was still in town,
gossiping with Hardwick Elliott. And Steve's bruised smile clutched at
Miss Sarah's heart.

"I!" he overdid his amusement. "I have lived too much alone, I'm
afraid, ever to prove very attractive to any woman's fancy. Bachelors
are not always born; they are sometimes the habits of loneliness."

"Stuff and nonsense!" the good woman ridiculed him. "Why--why, if it
weren't for a suspicion that you might have your eye on some small
person or other, I'd drop everything and hunt one up for you, myself.
Why, Stephen, what a remark for me to hear from you!"

Both were silent for a moment.

"Marriage is a mighty--expensive proposition," he commented at length,
profoundly.

"Is Garry such a plutocrat any more?"

"That is not a fair illustration for us to employ," he countered, and
Barbara Allison was not the only woman who loved his lazily final
statements. "Both Garry and Miriam have been taught that there are
worse things than the hardship of making last year's limousine do for
another season."

Miss Sarah laughed at this drollery. She was a better antagonist than
most. She had practiced on Caleb.

"Can't one girl learn what another has been taught?" she wanted to
know. "Stephen, do you mean to sit there and infer that you could
continue to _care_ for a girl who could not care for you, just for
yourself?"

His reply told her how