the Marches had the conditions, almost dismayingly perfect, in which they had often promised themselves to go and be young again in Europe, when they rebelled at finding themselves elderly in America.  Their daughter was married, and so very much to her mother’s mind that she did not worry about her, even though she lived so far away as Chicago, still a wild frontier town to her Boston imagination; and their son, as soon as he left college, had taken hold on ‘Every Other Week’, under his father’s instruction, with a zeal and intelligence which won him Fulkerson’s praise as a chip of the old block.  These two liked each other, and worked into each other’s hands as cordially and aptly as Fulkerson and March had ever done.  It amused the father to see his son offering Fulkerson the same deference which the Business End paid to seniority in March himself; but in fact, Fulkerson’s forehead was getting, as he said, more intellectual every day; and the years were pushing them all along together.

Still, March had kept on in the old rut, and one day he fell down in it.  He had a long sickness, and when he was well of it, he was so slow in getting his grip of work again that he was sometimes deeply discouraged.  His wife shared his depression, whether he showed or whether he hid it, and when the doctor advised his going abroad, she abetted the doctor with all the strength of a woman’s hygienic intuitions.  March himself willingly consented, at first; but as soon as he got strength for his work, he began to temporize and to demur.  He said that he believed it would do him just as much good to go to Saratoga, where they always had such a good time, as to go to Carlsbad; and Mrs. March had been obliged several times to leave him to his own undoing; she always took him more vigorously in hand afterwards.

II.

When he got home from the ‘Every Other Week’ office, the afternoon of that talk with the Business End, he wanted to laugh with his wife at Fulkerson’s notion of a Sabbatical year.  She did not think it was so very droll; she even urged it seriously against him, as if she had now the authority of Holy Writ for forcing him abroad; she found no relish of absurdity in the idea that it was his duty to take this rest which had been his right before.

He abandoned himself to a fancy which had been working to the surface of his thought.  “We could call it our Silver Wedding Journey, and go round to all the old places, and see them in the reflected light of the past.”

“Oh, we could!” she responded, passionately; and he had now the delicate responsibility of persuading her that he was joking.

He could think of nothing better than a return to Fulkerson’s absurdity.  “It would be our Silver Wedding Journey just as it would be my Sabbatical year—­a good deal after date.  But I suppose that would make it all the more silvery.”

She faltered in her elation.  “Didn’t you say a Sabbatical year yourself?” she demanded.