John, stepping backward from his door one day, saying a last word to his wife, who stood on the threshold, pushed against this neighbor as he was moving with somewhat cumbersome haste to catch the stage, turned quickly, and raised his hat. "Pardon!" The other uncovered his bald head and circlet of white, silken locks, and hurried on to the conveyance. "President of one of the banks down-town," whispered John. That is the nearest they ever came to being acquainted. And even this accident might not have occurred had not the man of snowy locks been glancing at Mary as he passed instead of at his omnibus. As he sat at home that evening he remarked:-- "Very pretty little woman that, my dear, that lives in the little house at the corner; who is she?" The lady responded, without lifting her eyes from the newspaper in which she was interested; she did not know. The husband mused and twirled his penknife between a finger and thumb. "They seem to be starting at the bottom," he observed. "Yes?" "Yes; much the same as we did." "I haven't noticed them particularly." "They're worth noticing," said the banker. He threw one fat knee over the other, and laid his head on the back of his easy-chair. The lady's eyes were still on her paper, but she asked:-- "Would you like me to go and see them?" "No, no--unless you wish." She dropped the paper into her lap with a smile and a sigh. "Don't propose it. I have so much going to do"-- She paused, removed her glasses, and fell to straightening the fringe of the lamp-mat. "Of course, if you think they're in need of a friend; but from your description"-- "No," he answered, quickly, "not at all. They've friends, no doubt. Everything about them has a neat, happy look. That's what attracted my notice. They've got friends, you may depend." He ceased, took up a pamphlet, and adjusted his glasses. "I think I saw a sofa going in there to-day as I came to dinner. A little expansion, I suppose." "It was going out," said the only son, looking up from a story-book. But the banker was reading. He heard nothing, and the word was not repeated. He did not divine that a little becalmed and befogged bark, with only two lovers in her, too proud to cry "Help!" had drifted just yonder upon the rocks, and, spar by spar and plank by plank, was dropping into the smooth, unmerciful sea. Before the sofa went there had gone, little by little, some smaller valuables. "You see," said Mary to her husband, with the bright hurry of a wife bent upon something high-handed, "we both have to have furniture; we must have it; and I don't have to have jewelry. Don't you see?" "No, I"-- "Now, John!" There could be but one end to the debate; she had determined that. The first piece was a bracelet. "No, I wouldn't pawn it," she said. "Better sell it outright at once."