At last Winnie too was ready to go to bed, and I said to her, gravely:  “Here is money to pay Melissa for that paper.  It was only fit for the gutter, and into the gutter I put it.  I wish you to promise me never to look at such pictures again, or you can never hope to grow up to be a lady like mamma.”

The child flushed deeply, and went tearful and penitent to bed.  Mousie also retired with a wistful look upon her face, for she saw that something of grave importance occupied my mind.

No matter how tired my wife might be, she was never satisfied to sit down until the room had been put in order, a green cloth spread upon the supper-table and the student lamp placed in its centre.

Merton brought his school-books, and my wife took up her mending, and we three sat down within the circle of light.

“Don’t do any more work to-night,” I said, looking into my wife’s face, and noting for a few moments that it was losing its rounded lines.

Her hands dropped wearily into her lap, and she began gratefully:  “I’m glad you speak so kindly to-night, Robert, for I am so nervous and out of sorts that I couldn’t have stood one bit of fault-finding—­I should have said things, and then have been sorry all day to-morrow.  Dear knows, each day brings enough without carrying anything over.  Come, read the paper to me, or tell me what you have been thinking about so deeply, if you don’t mind Merton’s hearing you.  I wish to forget myself, and work, and everything that worries me, for a little while.”

“I’ll read the paper first, and then, after Merton has learned his lessons, I will tell you my thoughts—­my purpose, I may almost say.  Merton shall know about it soon, for he is becoming old enough to understand the ‘why’ of things.  I hope, my boy, that your teacher lays a good deal of stress on the why in all your studies.”

“Oh, yes, after a fashion.”

“Well, so far as I am your teacher, Merton, I wish you always to think why you should do a thing or why you shouldn’t, and to try not to be satisfied with any reason but a good one.”

Then I gleaned from the paper such items as I thought would interest my wife.  At last we were alone, with no sound in the room but the low roar of the city, a roar so deep as to make one think that the tides of life were breaking waves.

I was doing some figuring in a note-book when my wife asked:  “Robert, what is your problem to-night?  And what part have I in it?”

“So important a part that I couldn’t solve it without you,” I replied, smiling at her.

“Oh, come now,” she said, laughing slightly for the first time in the evening; “you always begin to flatter a little when you want to carry a point.”

“Well, then, you are on your guard against my wiles.  But believe me, Winifred, the problem on my mind is not like one of my ordinary brown studies; in those I often try to get back to the wherefore of things which people usually accept and don’t bother about.  The question I am considering comes right home to us, and we must meet it.  I have felt for some time that we could not put off action much longer, and to-night I am convinced of it.”