“You look better certainly,” he said, regarding her curiously, not knowing that the improvement was owing to the artistic way in which Beatrice had knotted up the heavy hair, which showed at the sides and added apparent breadth to the thin, narrow face. What a noble-looking man he was, and how well he appeared, as if he had associated with kings and queens instead of the poor heathen, and what a change his presence made in that dingy back room, which, with him in it, had at once an atmosphere of home and domestic happiness. He had been there but a few moments at the most, but in that time he had smoothed his wife’s hair, and called her Mollie, the pet name she liked, and made her smile, had tossed Bunchie in the air and stuffed her fat hands with candy, had kissed little Trixey, and given her a new picture-book, and taken the baby from her and was walking with it up and down the room to hush its wailing cry. And between times he talked to Beatrice, naturally and easily, asking for the people he used to know in Rothsay, and if she was living there now; then, stopping suddenly, he said: “I beg your pardon for taking it for granted you were Miss Belknap still. Are you married? You used to be a sad flirt.” He said the last playfully, and the two looked at each other an instant, and their eyes dropped suddenly as if alarmed at what they saw. “I am Bee Belknap still, and as great a flirt as ever,” Bee replied; and then the Rev. Theo did a most remarkable thing; he turned to his wife, and said: “Mollie, dear, do you know I was once foolish enough to ask this gay bird to go with me to the Feegees, and she had the good sense to refuse. Wouldn’t she have cut a fine figure out there with all her finery and fashion?” “Yes, I know,” Mollie said faintly, while Bee rejoined, laughingly: “You ought to be very thankful that I preferred fashion to Feegees; such a life as I should have led you.” “You would have died,” Mollie rejoined, and the conversation on that subject ceased. Theo had set things right for them all by his plain and playful allusion to the past, which, from that allusion, would be supposed to have no part in his present life, and to have left no mark upon him. He seemed very happy with his children, and very kind to his wife, who was a different creature with his strong, mesmeric influence near her. “I believe she’d be passably good-looking if she were decently dressed. She has good hair, not bad features, and rather fine eyes; but where are the glasses, she surely wore them away?” Beatrice thought, and at last she ventured to say: “Excuse me, Mrs. Morton, but did you not wear glasses on shipboard six years ago?” “Yes,” was the reply, “my eyes were weak from over-study, trying to master the language, and I was obliged to wear glasses for a time. I laid them off after Trixey was born. Theo never liked me in them.”