He had so far been able to conceal from Fanny the fact that he had withdrawn all his little savings to invest in that mining stock.  The stock had not yet come up, as he had expected.  He very seldom had a circular reporting progress nowadays.  When he did have one in the post-office his heart used to stand still until he had torn open the envelope and read it.  It was uniformly not so hopeful as formerly, while speciously apologetic.  Andrew still had faith, although his heart was sick with its long deferring.  He could not actually believe that all his savings were gone, sunken out of sight forever in this awful shaft of miscalculation and misfortune.  What he dreaded most was that Fanny should find out, as she would have to were he long out of employment.

Andrew, when he entered the house on his return from work, had come to open a door into the room where his wife was, with a deprecating and apologetic air.  He gained confidence when, after a few minutes, the sore subject had not been broached.

To-night, as usual, when he came into the sitting-room where Fanny was sewing it was with a sidelong glance of uneasy deprecation towards her, and an attempt to speak easily, as if he had nothing on his mind.

“Pretty warm day,” he began, but his wife cut him short.  She faced around towards him beaming, her work—­a pink wrapper—­slid from her lap to the floor.

“What do you think, Andrew?” she said.  “What do you s’pose has happened?  Guess.”  Andrew laughed gratefully, and with the greatest alacrity.  Surely this was nothing about mining-stocks, unless, indeed, she had heard, and the stocks had gone up, but that seemed to much like the millennium.  He dismissed that from his mind before it entered.  He stood before her in his worn clothes.  He always wore a collar and a black tie, and his haggard face was carefully shaven.  Andrew was punctiliously neat, on Ellen’s account.  He was always thinking, suppose he should meet Ellen coming home from school, with some young ladies whose fathers were rich and did not have to work in the shop, how mortified she might feel if he looked shabby and unkempt.

“Guess, Andrew,” she said.

“What is it?” said Andrew.

“Oh, you guess.”

“I don’t see what it can be, Fanny.”

“Well, Ellen has got the valedictory.  What’s the matter with you?  Be you deaf?  Ellen has got the valedictory out of all them girls and boys.”

“She has, has she?” said Andrew.  He dropped into a chair and looked at his wife.  There was something about the intense interchange of confidence of delight between these two faces of father and mother which had almost the unrestraint of lunacy.  Andrew’s jaw fairly dropped with his smile, which was a silent laugh rather than a smile; his eyes were wild with delight.  “She has, has she?” he kept repeating.

“Yes, she has,” said Fanny.  She tossed her head with an incomparable pride; she coughed a little, affected cough.  “I s’pose you know what a compliment it is?” said she.  “It means that she’s smarter than all them boys and girls—­the smartest one in her whole class.”