“Who’d ever think,” pursued his wife, “who’d ever think that we’d been married less than eight years? But this is what comes of not furnishing new when you first set up housekeeping. If you don’t get nice things when you marry you never get them.” “Some people,” said Mar, “seem to like old furniture.” “Let them have it, then!” Her quick gesture presented the entire contents of the house to the first bidder. “_I_ say for young people to begin life with the battered belongings of their fathers and mothers is a mistake.” “Well, my dear,” returned her husband, with some dignity, “it’s a mistake you had no share in. But,” he added hastily, “we had no choice.” “No,” she said bitterly, “we’ve had very little choice.” “We did once,” said Nathaniel Mar. In the pause she looked down at the patch on the carpet. “And we ignored it,” he finished. “Oh, if you are going back upon that old foolishness.” She turned abruptly and set down the broken cup. “You didn’t think it so foolish when I first told you about it.” “Oh, didn’t I!” “No. It made just all the difference then.” “What difference, I’d like to know, did it ever make?” “It made you say ‘Yes’ after you’d said ‘No.’” “The more fool I,” she said, and left the room. CHAPTER II The big man and the little man sat and looked at the patch on the carpet, till for one of them the ragged place disappeared. A big tear splashed on the grimy little hand. But out of the mist, a voice: “Can’t you think of any safer sort of games?” The balked navigator sniffed audibly, and with the back of his hand he made a dirty smear across his wet face. “We don’t any of us seem to care much about vem, if vey are too safe.” “H’m,” and with a faint smile Mar resumed his writing. Jack Galbraith sat quite still, for him, with the disgraced foot tucked under him. But Mar, without raising his eyes, was conscious as a woman might have been, of the frequent journey of the small hand across the eyes, and now and then the more efficacious aid of a sleeve employed to clear the watery vision. Presently, “After I ’most dwownded ve childwen, I expect she wouldn’t let me wead my twavel book. What do you fink, Mr. Mar?” The gentleman addressed laid down his pen, but still looking at it, “Well, I don’t know,” he said cautiously. Whereupon Jack Galbraith gave way openly to tears. “You’re not going to forget,” said the man, with no great show of sympathy, “you’re not going to forget that however much a boy’s father leaves him, America hasn’t got any use for an idle man.” “It’s Mrs. Mar makes me sit here doin’ nuffin’,” the child indignantly defended himself. “Oh, for the moment, yes. But when the time comes to choose what you’re going to do, Jack—if I’m not at hand to talk it over, think about civil engineering. It takes a man about, and on more intelligent terms than my profession—”