“What do you suppose,” Mrs. Houghton said, remembering this summing up of things, “Edith told me this morning that the reason I loved Maurice more than I loved her—­”

“What!”

“Yes; isn’t she funny?—­was because he ’wiped his feet when he came into the house.’”

Edith’s father stopped whistling, and smiled:  “That child is as practical as a shuttle; but she hasn’t a mean streak in her!” he said, with satisfaction, and began to whistle again.  “Nice girl,” he said, after a while; “but the most rationalizing youngster!  I hope she’ll get foolish before she falls in love.  Mary, one of these days, when she grows up, perhaps she and Maurice—?”

“Matchmaker!” she said, horrified; then objected:  “Can’t she rationalize and fall in love too?  I’m rather given to reason myself, Henry.”

“Yes, honey; you are now; but you were as sweet a fool as anybody when you fell in love, thank God.”  She laughed, and he said, resignedly, “I suppose you’ll have an hour’s shopping to do?  You have only one of the vices of your sex, Mary, you have the ‘shopping mind.’  However, with all thy faults I love thee still....  We’ll go to the post office first; then I can read my letters while you are colloguing with the storekeepers.”

Mrs. Houghton, looking at her list, agreed, and when he got out for the mail she was still checking off people and purchases; it was only when she had added one or two more errands that she suddenly awoke to the fact that he was very slow in coming back with the letters.  “Stupid!” she thought, “opening your mail in the post office, instead of keeping it to read while I’m shopping!”—­but even as she reproached him, he came out and climbed into the buggy, in very evident perturbation.

“Where do you want to go?” he said; she, asking no questions (marvelous woman!) told him.  He said “G’tap!” angrily; Lion backed, and the wheel screeched against the curb.  “Oh, g’on!” he said.  Lion switched his tail, caught a rein under it, and trotted off.  Mr. Houghton leaned over the dashboard, swore softly, and gave the horse a slap with the rescued rein.  But the outburst loosened the dumb distress that had settled upon him in the post office; he gave a despairing grunt: 

“Well!  Maurice has come the final cropper.”

“Smith’s next, dear,” she said; “What is it, Henry?”

“He’s gone on the rocks (druggist Smith, or fish Smith?)”

“Druggist.  Has Maurice been drinking?” She could not keep the anxiety out of her voice.

“Drinking?  He could be as drunk as a lord and I wouldn’t—­Whoa, Lion!...  Get me some shaving soap, Kit!” he called after her, as she went into the shop.

When she came back with her packages and got into the buggy, she said, quietly, “Tell me, Henry.”

“He has simply done what I put him in the way of doing when I gave him a letter of introduction to that Mrs. Newbolt, in Mercer.”