She kept a light, gay tone thus far, standing the other side of the grate from him, but when he came near as if to draw her toward him, she said hurriedly, “These boys have been too much for me, and tried me terribly.  If you will not care, Ross, I think I’ll say ‘Good-night,’ though it’s early.  Don’t stay in, if you would like to go to your club or anywhere, because it is our first evening.  You see, I am going to desert you first.  It’s part of the compact, you know, that I am never to be in your way.”

“Oh, Percy,” he said, in a very boyishly aggrieved tone, “I don’t want to go anywhere where you are not.”

“You will soon get tired of that, Ross.  But I’m glad you don’t want to go to-night:  I doubt your being quite able to walk much in the evening.  Yet I feel as if I must say ‘Good-night’ and get myself in the dark.  Why?  I’m unstrung.  The newness of my life with you, the traveling, this coming home with you to a place where I am to know either joy or woe, and all this talk with Harry and Sheldon, have been almost more than I could bear;” and her lip quivered.  “It’s all I have been able to do this last hour to keep from crying, and I do hate to cry before people.”  The long-suppressed emotion of all these weeks had broken bounds and she shook with sobs, while every nerve seemed quivering, and all she said was, “Ross, Ross! please forgive me!  I am so sorry to be so foolish!” And though he strove by every tender method to comfort and soothe her, it was in vain; and at length, really frightened, he carried her to the little room she had appropriated for herself, and as tenderly as a mother, though as shyly as a girl, put his poor little done-out wife in her bed, too weak to resist his kind services, indeed, scarcely noticing them.

The next day, when he returned from what he and his friends, by an agreeable fiction, called an “office,” where he generally spent as many hours as served to give him a flavor of business and a figurative title as a businessman—­where were to be found the best cigars and choicest wines, and generally a pleasant circle of good fellows congregated—­he found Percy with the most charming little dinner awaiting him; the table exquisite in the finest, whitest napery, gleaming with silver, sparkling in glass, and every dish cooked and served in quite Parisian style, and the little lady herself in the brightest toilette, with such a matronly air that he could hardly realize the scene of the last night’s misery.

“Tears all gone, Ross, tragedy played out, and the little woman who keeps house for you is herself again, and has been as busy as a nailer.  Are nailers busier than other men, I wonder?  All your boxes came.  Such bliss as it was to us poor women to feast our eyes upon all that heritage of linen and silver, and china and glass!  Your mother must have been a famous manager, Ross, to leave you such a store.  I’m so glad we’ve got that old place on the Harlem stored with all this beautiful array.  Do you know, Ross, I think I’ve discovered my especial calling to-day?  It’s housekeeping, and I elect myself to go some time to that lovely old mansion and expend myself in hospitality.  I’ll invite you to come and visit me.”