Mary tried playfully to retort, but John restrained her, and when she contrived to utter something absurdly complimentary of her husband he was her only hearer. They went back into the house, talking of other matters. Something turned the conversation upon Mrs. Riley, and from that subject it seemed to pass naturally to Ristofalo. Mary, laughing and talking softly as they entered their room, called to John's recollection the Italian's account of how he had once bought a tarpaulin hat and a cottonade shirt of the pattern called a "jumper," and had worked as a deck-hand in loading and unloading steam-boats. It was so amusingly sensible to put on the proper badge for the kind of work sought. Richling mused. Many a dollar he might have earned the past summer, had he been as ingeniously wise, he thought. "Ristofalo is coming here this evening," said he, taking a seat in the alley window. Mary looked at him with sidelong merriment. The Italian was coming to see Mrs. Riley. "Why, John," whispered Mary, standing beside him, "she's nearly ten years older than he is!" But John quoted the old saying about a man's age being what he feels, and a woman's what she looks. "Why,--but--dear, it is scarcely a fortnight since she declared nothing could ever induce"-- "Let her alone," said John, indulgently. "Hasn't she said half-a-dozen times that it isn't good for woman to be alone? A widow's a woman--and you never disputed it." "O John," laughed Mary, "for shame! You know I didn't mean that. You know I never could mean that." And when John would have maintained his ground she besought him not to jest in that direction, with eyes so ready for tears that he desisted. "I only meant to be generous to Mrs. Riley," he said. "I know it," said Mary, caressingly; "you're always on the generous side of everything." She rested her hand fondly on his arm, and he took it into his own. One evening the pair were out for that sunset walk which their young blood so relished, and which often led them, as it did this time, across the wide, open commons behind the town, where the unsettled streets were turf-grown, and toppling wooden lamp-posts threatened to fall into the wide, cattle-trodden ditches. "Fall is coming," said Mary. "Let it come!" exclaimed John; "it's hung back long enough."