“Did you change the check, Harry? You said you would give the money to me to take care of,” she suggested, laughing. “No, I haven’t changed it. The fact is,” he continued, seeing a look of perplexity on his wife’s face. “George has overdrawn his account a good deal, and they won’t cash such a big check until they have heard from him.” “But fifty pounds is not such a very large sum; and your family has banked there for years and years, I know. Doesn’t it seem rather strange, Harry, that they should refuse when they know you so well?” This was a rather unfortunate suggestion, as the character of the Braithwaite boys had not always stood high in money matters; but Harry only said: “Oh, it will be all right, of course! I wrote to George this afternoon, and I shall get an answer to-morrow or Monday. Don’t you feel awfully nervous about to-morrow night?” “Indeed I do. If it were not for the way you take me about and divert my thoughts, I believe I should make myself ill by the way I worry myself about it. I must go now; rehearsal begins at seven, so I shall be wanted at half-past.” This was the night rehearsal, on the eve of the production of the new piece. For a week the manager had not slept, weighted with doubts about the success of a performance which had cost him months of thought, care and actual labor of body and mind. He was a popular man, and the members of the company sympathized with him, though their own lesser responsibility sat far more lightly upon them, and the green-room during the last rehearsals, when doubts far outweighed hopes regarding the piece they were all at work upon, rang with laughter as the foremost wits of the company made cruel jokes upon the “governor” and his troubles. The next morning, just as Annie was starting for the last rehearsal of all, a telegram came for her husband. He read it and thrust it into his pocket without any remark and without any offer to show it to her. She was getting used to quiet self-reliance on her husband’s part: but this action surprised her. “From George?” she asked rather diffidently. “Yes. Stephen is coming up this morning to see me, with statements from George--not very cheerful ones, I fancy. But don’t trouble your head about that, darling, or you will be unfit for to-night. We shall pull through right enough, never fear!” “Why, I am not nearly so anxious as you are, Harry! I shall get my salary next week--six guineas--and then, if we only live a little more economically, we shall get on splendidly.” “Yes, yes; it will be all right. There is the hansom outside. I must send you alone this morning, my darling, for I must stay at home to see Stephen when he comes. Good-bye--good luck to you, Annie.” He put her carefully into the hansom, giving her hand a tender lover-like little squeeze as he helped her in, and went back into the hotel for his cigar-case, to pass away the time with a cigar as he walked up and down outside, waiting for his cousin.