t won't take very much of your time."

He returned to a perusal of the financial column, but his eye from time
to time wandered from the sheet to his wife, who was reading her letters.

"Howard," she said, "I feel dreadfully about Mrs. Holt. We haven't been
at Silverdale all summer. Here's a note from her saying she'll be in town
to-morrow for the Charities Conference, asking me to come to see her at
her hotel. I think I'll go to Silverdale a little later."

"Why don't you?" he said. "It would do you good."

"And you?" she asked.

"My only day of the week is Sunday, Honora. You know that. And I wouldn't
spend another day at Silverdale if they gave me a deed to the property,"
he declared.

On the train, when Howard had returned from the smoking car and they were
about to disembark at Long Island City, they encountered Mr. Trixton
Brent.

"Whither away?" he cried in apparent astonishment. "Up at dawn, and the
eight o'clock train!"

"We were going to look at a house," explained Honora, "and Howard has no
other time."

"I'll go, too," declared Mr. Brent, promptly. "You mightn't think me a
judge of houses, but I am. I've lived in so many bad ones that I know a
good one when I see it now."

"Honora has got a wild notion into her head that I'm going to take the
Farnham house," said Howard, smiling. There, on the deck of the
ferryboat, in the flooding sunlight, the idea seemed to give him
amusement. With the morning light Pharaoh must have hardened his heart.

"Well, perhaps you are," said Mr. Brent, conveying to Honora his delight
in the situation by a scarcely perceptible wink. "I shouldn't like to
take the other end of the bet. Why shouldn't you? You're fat and healthy
and making money faster than you can gather it in."

Howard coughed, and laughed a little, uncomfortably. Trixton Brent was
not a man to offend.

"Honora has got that delusion, too," he replied. He steeled himself in
his usual manner for the ordeal to come by smoking a cigarette, for the
arrival of such a powerful ally on his wife's side lent a different
aspect to the situation.

Honora, during this colloquy, was silent. She was a little uncomfortable,
and pretended not to see Mr. Brent's wink.

"Incredible as it may seem, I expected to have my automobile ready this
morning," he observed; "we might have gone in that. It landed three days
ago, but so far it has failed to do anything but fire off revolver
shots."

"Oh, I do wish you had it,"