Mrs. March’s eyes still dwelt upon Christine’s face; it was full of a furtive wildness.  She seemed to be keeping a watch to prevent herself from looking as if she were looking for some one.  “Do you know,” Mrs. March said to her husband as they jingled along homeward in the Christopher Street bob-tail car, “I thought she was in love with that detestable Mr. Beaton of yours at one time; and that he was amusing himself with her.”

“I can bear a good deal, Isabel,” said March, “but I wish you wouldn’t attribute Beaton to me.  He’s the invention of that Mr. Fulkerson of yours.”

“Well, at any rate, I hope, now, you’ll both get rid of him, in the reforms you’re going to carry out.”

These reforms were for a greater economy in the management of ’Every Other Week;’ but in their very nature they could not include the suppression of Beaton.  He had always shown himself capable and loyal to the interests of the magazine, and both the new owners were glad to keep him.  He was glad to stay, though he made a gruff pretence of indifference, when they came to look over the new arrangement with him.  In his heart he knew that he was a fraud; but at least he could say to himself with truth that he had not now the shame of taking Dryfoos’s money.

March and Fulkerson retrenched at several points where it had seemed indispensable to spend, as long as they were not spending their own:  that was only human.  Fulkerson absorbed Conrad’s department into his, and March found that he could dispense with Kendricks in the place of assistant which he had lately filled since Fulkerson had decided that March was overworked.  They reduced the number of illustrated articles, and they systematized the payment of contributors strictly according to the sales of each number, on their original plan of co-operation:  they had got to paying rather lavishly for material without reference to the sales.

Fulkerson took a little time to get married, and went on his wedding journey out to Niagara, and down the St. Lawrence to Quebec over the line of travel that the Marches had taken on their wedding journey.  He had the pleasure of going from Montreal to Quebec on the same boat on which he first met March.

They have continued very good friends, and their wives are almost without the rivalry that usually embitters the wives of partners.  At first Mrs. March did not like Mrs. Fulkerson’s speaking of her husband as the Ownah, and March as the Edito’; but it appeared that this was only a convenient method of recognizing the predominant quality in each, and was meant neither to affirm nor to deny anything.  Colonel Woodburn offered as his contribution to the celebration of the copartnership, which Fulkerson could not be prevented from dedicating with a little dinner, the story of Fulkerson’s magnanimous behavior in regard to Dryfoos at that crucial moment when it was a question whether he should give up Dryfoos or give up March.  Fulkerson winced at it; but Mrs. March told her husband that now, whatever happened, she should never have any misgivings of Fulkerson again; and she asked him if he did not think he ought to apologize to him for the doubts with which he had once inspired her.  March said that he did not think so.