He began to pace the room with a weary abstracted look,—­he was much worn by watching,—­and, seeing that he was in no mood for words, I took up a book which lay upon the table.  It chanced to be one of Alger’s, which somebody had lent to the Doctor before Harrie’s illness; it was a marked book, and I ran my eye over the pencilled passages.  I recollect having been struck with this one:  “A man’s best friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom he loves and who loves him.”

“You believe that?” said Myron, suddenly, behind my shoulder.

“I believe that a man’s wife ought to be his best friend,—­in every sense of the word, his best friend,—­or she ought never to be his wife.”

“And if—­there will be differences of temperament, and—­other things.  If you were a man now, for instance, Miss Hannah—­”

I interrupted him with hot cheeks and sudden courage.

“If I were a man, and my wife were not the best friend I had or could have in the world, nobody should ever know it,—­she, least of all,—­Myron Sharpe!”

Young people will bear a great deal of impertinence from an old lady, but we had both gone further than we meant to.  I closed Mr. Alger with a snap, and went up to Harrie.

The day that Mrs. Sharpe sat up in the easy-chair for two hours, Miss Dallas, who had felt called upon to stay and nurse her dear Harrie to recovery, and had really been of service, detailed on duty among the babies, went home.

Dr. Sharpe drove her to the station.  I accompanied them at his request.  Miss Dallas intended, I think, to look a little pensive, but had her lunch to cram into a very full travelling-bag, and forgot it.  The Doctor, with clear, courteous eyes, shook hands, and wished her a pleasant journey.

He drove home in silence, and went directly to his wife’s room.  A bright blaze flickered on the old-fashioned fireplace, and the walls bowed with pretty dancing shadows.  Harrie, all alone, turned her face weakly and smiled.

Well, they made no fuss about it, after all.  Her husband came and stood beside her; a cricket on which one of the baby’s dresses had been thrown, lay between them; it seemed, for the moment, as if he dared not cross the tiny barrier.  Something of that old fancy about the lights upon the altar may have crossed his thought.

“So Miss Dallas has fairly gone, Harrie,” said he, pleasantly, after a pause.

“Yes.  She has been very kind to the children while I have been sick.”

“Very.”

“You must miss her,” said poor Harrie, trembling; she was very weak yet.

The Doctor knocked away the cricket, folded his wife’s two shadowy hands into his own, and said:—­

“Harrie we have no strength to waste, either of us, upon a scene; but I am sorry, and I love you.”

She broke all down at that, and, dear me! they almost had a scene in spite of themselves.  For O, she had always known what a little goose she was; and Pauline never meant any harm, and how handsome she was, you know! only she didn’t have three babies to look after, nor a snubbed nose either, and the sachet powder was only American, and the very servants knew, and, O Myron! she had wanted to be dead so long, and then—­