“Thank you, dear,” she said, when Harry resumed his seat.  “The air is cold but very clear and pleasant out to-day,” she continued.

“It looks so,” said Harry.

“Still, if I were you, I think I would not go out; it might make your cold worse,” said Ida.

“No, I think it would be full as well for me to stay in to-day,” replied Harry happily.  He hemmed a little as he spoke, realizing the tickle in his throat with rather a pleasant sense of importance than annoyance.  He stretched himself luxuriously in his chair, and gazed about the warm, perfumed, luxurious apartment.

“You have to go out to-morrow, anyway,” said Ida, and she increased his sense of present comfort by that remark.

“That is so,” said Harry, with a slight sigh.

Lately it had seemed harder than ever before for him to start early in the black winter mornings and hurry for his train.  Then, too, he had what he had never had before, a sense of boredom, of ennui, so intense that it was almost a pain.  The deadly monotony of it wearied him.  For the first time in his life his harness of duty chafed his spirit.  He was so tired of seeing the same train, the same commuters, taking the same path across the station to the ferry-boat, being jostled by the same throng, going to the same office, performing the same, or practically the same, duties, that his very soul was irritated.  He had reached a point where he not only needed but demanded a change, but the change was as impossible, without destruction, as for a planet to leave its orbit.

Ida saw the deepening of the frown on his forehead and the lengthening of the lines around his mouth.

“Poor old man!” said she.  “I wish I had a fortune to give you, so you wouldn’t have to go.”

The words were fairly cooing, but the tone was still harsh.  However, Harry brightened.  He regarded this lovely, blooming creature and inhaled again the odor of dinner, and reflected with a sense of gratitude upon his mercies.  Harry had a grateful heart, and was always ready to blame himself.

“Oh, I should be lost, go all to pieces, if I quit work,” he said, laughing.  “If I were left a fortune, I should land in an insane asylum very likely, or take to drink.  No, dear, you can’t teach such an old bird new tricks; he’s been in one tree too long, summer and winter.”

“Well, after all, you have not got to go out to-day,” remarked Ida, skilfully, and Harry again stretched himself with a sense of present comfort.

“That is so, dear,” he said.

“I have something you like for supper, too,” said Ida, “and I think George Adams and Louisa may drop in and we can have some music.”

Harry brightened still more.  He liked George Adams, and the wife had more than a talent for music, of which Harry was passionately fond.  She played wonderfully on Ida’s well-tuned grand piano.

“I thought you might like it,” said Ida, “and I spoke to Louisa as I was coming out of church.”