Her courage lasted until he was on the train, travelling toward the new town and the new position.  But as she walked back to her own business, a sort of nausea seized her.  The big, heroic fight was over; John’s life was saved, and the debt reduced to a reasonable burden.  But the deadly monotony was ahead, the drudgery of days and days of hateful labor, the struggle—­for what?  When could they ever take their place again in the world that they knew?  Who could ever work up again from debts like these?  Would John always be the weak, helpless convalescent, or would he go back to the old type, the bored, silent man of clubs and business?

Margaret turned a grimy corner, and was joined by one of her boarders, a cheerful little army wife.

“Well, we’ll miss Mr. Kirby, I’m sure,” said little Mrs. Camp, as they mounted the steps.  “And by the way, Mrs. Kirby, you won’t mind if I ask if we mayn’t just now and then have some of the new towels on our floor—­will you?  We never get anything but the old, thin towels.  Of course, it’s Alma’s fault; but I think every one ought to take a turn at the new towels as well as the old, don’t you?”

“I’ll speak to Alma,” said Margaret, turning her key.

A lonely, busy autumn fellowed, and a winter of hard and thankless work.

“I feel like a plumber’s wife,” smiled Margaret to Mrs. Kippam, when in November John wrote her of a “raise.”

But when he came down for two days at Christmastime, she noticed that he was brown, cheerful, and amazingly strong.  They were as shy as lovers on this little holiday, Margaret finding that her old maternal, half-patronizing attitude toward her husband did not fit the case at all, and John almost as much at a loss.

In April she went up to Applebridge, and they spent a whole day roaming about in the fresh spring fields together.

“It’s really a delicious little place,” she confided to Mrs. Kippam when she returned.  “The sort of place where kiddies carry their lunches to school, and their mothers put up preserves, and everybody has a surrey and an old horse.  John’s quite a big man up there.”

After the April visit came a long break, for John went to Chicago in the July fortnight they had planned to spend together; and when he at last came to New York for another Christmas, Margaret was in bed with a bad throat, and could only whisper her questions.  So another winter struggled by, and another spring, and when summer came Margaret found that it was almost impossible to break away from her increasing responsibilities.

But on a fragrant, soft October day she found herself getting off the early train in the little station; and as a big man waved his hat to her, and they turned to walk down the road together, they smiled into each other’s eyes like two children.

“Were you surprised at the letter?” said John.

“Not so much surprised as glad,” said Margaret, coloring like a girl.