“Well, I am sure I hope she will,” said Henry, still regarding his wife with wonder.

“She is going to, and if she does stay, you know you can’t go back to work in the shop, Henry Whitman.  I’d like to know how you think you could set down to the table with her, smelling of leather the way you used to.”

“There might be worse smells.”

“That’s just because you are used to it.”

“That’s just it,” cried Henry, pathetically.  “Can’t you get it through your head, Sylvia?  It is because I’m used to it.  Can’t you see it’s kind of dangerous to turn a man out of his tracks after he’s been in them so long?”

“There ain’t any need for you to work in the shop.  We’ve got plenty of money without,” said Sylvia, settling back immovably in her chair, and Henry gave it up.

Sylvia considered that she had won the victory.  She began sewing again.  Henry continued to look out of the window.

“She is a delicate little thing, and I guess it’s mighty lucky for her that she came to live in the country just as she did,” Sylvia observed.

“I suppose you know what’s bound to happen if she and Mr. Allen stay on in the same house,” said Henry.  “As far as I am concerned, I think it would be a good arrangement.  Mr. Allen has a good salary, and she has enough to make up for what he can’t do; and I would like to keep the child here myself, but I somehow thought you didn’t like the idea.”

Again Sylvia turned white, and stared at her husband almost with horror.  “I don’t see why you think it is bound to happen,” said she.

Henry laughed.  “It doesn’t take a very long head to think so.”

“It sha’n’t happen.  That child ain’t going to marry anybody.”

“Sylvia, you don’t mean that you want her to be an old maid!”

“It’s the best thing for any girl, if she only thought so, to be an old maid,” said Sylvia.

Henry laughed a little.  “That’s a compliment to me.”

“I ain’t saying anything against you.  I’ve been happy enough, and I suppose I’ve been better off than if I’d stayed single; but Rose has got enough to live on, and what any girl that’s got enough to live on wants to get married for beats me.”

Henry laughed again, a little bitterly this time.  “Then you wouldn’t have married me if you had had enough to live on?” he said.

Sylvia looked at him, and an odd, shamed tenderness came into her elderly face.  “There’s no use talking about what wasn’t, anyway,” said she, and Henry understood.

After a little while Sylvia again brought up the subject of Horace and Rose.  She was evidently very uneasy about it.  “I don’t see why you think because a young man and girl are in the same house anything like that is bound to happen,” said she.