y looked gratefully at her. "But you have to learn your lesson."

"Oh, I can finish that in school to-morrow. I don't feel like working
any more to-night, and I do feel like reading the paper."

"Won't it tire you, dear?"

"Tire me? Now, father, what do you take me for?" Maria settled
herself in a chair. Harry leaned back his head contentedly; he had
always like to be read to, and lately reading to himself had hurt his
eyes. "Now, what shall I read, father?" she said.

Poor Harry, remembering his own futile investments, asked for the
stock-list, and Maria read it very intelligently for a young girl who
knew nothing about stocks.

"Once I owned some of that stock," said Harry, proudly.

"Did you, father?" Maria responded, admiringly.

"Yes, and only look where it is now! If I could only have held on to
it, I might have been quite a rich man."

Harry spoke, oddly enough, with no regret. Such was the childishness
of the man that a possession once his never seemed wholly lost to
him. It seemed to him that he had reason to be proud of having made
such a wise investment, even if he had never actually reaped any
benefit from it.

"I don't see how you knew what to invest in," Maria said, fostering
his pride.

"Oh, I had to study the stock-lists and ask brokers," Harry replied.
He looked brighter. This little reinstatement in his self-esteem
acted like a tonic. In some fashion Ida always kept him alive to his
own deficiencies, and that was not good for a man who was naturally
humble-minded. Harry sat up straighter. He looked at Maria with
brighter eyes as she continued reading. "Now _that_ is a good
investment," said he--"that bond. If I had the money to spare I would
buy one of those bonds to-morrow morning."

"Are bonds better than stocks, father?" asked Maria.

"Yes," replied Harry, importantly. "Always remember that, if you have
any money to invest. A man can afford to buy stocks, because he has
better opportunities of judging of the trend of the market, but bonds
are always safer for a woman."

Maria regarded her father again with that innocent admiration for his
wisdom, which seemed to act like a nerve stimulant. A subtle
physician might possibly have reached the conclusion, had he been
fully aware of all the circumstances, that Ida, with her radiant
superiority, her voiceless but none the less positive self-assertion
over her husband, was actually a means of spiritual depression which
had reacted upon his