"I don't know what is going to become of him," Thomas went on. "When you come to provide for three out of the hardware business, nobody gets very much." Mrs. Dilworth was silent. "I was talking about him to Dr. Lavendar yesterday, and he said: 'Oh, he'll fall in love one of these days, and he'll see that fiddling won't buy his wife her shoe-strings; then he'll take to the hardware business,' Dr. Lavendar said. It's all very well to talk about his falling in love and taking to business; but if he falls in love, I'll have another mouth to fill. And maybe more," he added, grimly. "Not for a year, anyway," his wife said, hopefully. "And, besides, I don't think Neddy's thinking of such a thing." "I hope not, at his age." "You were engaged when you were nineteen." "My dear, I wasn't Ned." Mrs. Dilworth was silent. "The Packards telegraphed to-day that they wouldn't take that reaper," Tom Dilworth said. Milly seemed to search for words of sympathy, but before she found them Tom began to talk of something else; he never waited for his wife's replies, or, indeed, expected them. He was so constituted that he had to have a listener; and during all their married life she had listened. When she replied, she was a sounding-board, echoing back his own opinions; when she was silent, he took her silence to mean agreement. Tom used to say that his Milly wasn't one of the smart kind; he didn't like smartness in a woman, anyway; but she had darned good sense;--for, like the rest of us, Thomas Dilworth had a deep belief in the intelligence of the people who agreed with him.... "I have a great mind," he rambled on, "to go up to the Hayeses'. You know that note is due on the 15th, and I believe I'll have to ask him to extend it. I hate to do it, but Packard has upset my calculations, and I'll have to get an extension, or else sell something out; and just now I don't like to do that." "Very well," she said. It was her birthday--the one day in the year that her Thomas remembered that he had been in love with her for so many years, months, days, hours, minutes--a fact she never for one day in the year forgot. But she could no more have reminded him of the day than she could have flown. She was constitutionally inexpressive. Tom began to whistle: [Illustration: music fragment] but broke off to say, "Well, since you advise it, I'll see Hayes"; then he gave her a kiss, and immediately forgot her--as completely as he had forgotten his supper or any other comfortable and absolutely necessary thing. Then he lighted his cigar and started for the Hayeses'. II