"No,--don't wait for me; I'll not be long. Have it brought in at once, and--send the man into the office, please." He stooped and kissed the children, and turning away, went into his office and closed the door behind him. A WORKING BASIS BY ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH Why she married him her friends wondered at the time. Those she made later wondered more. Before long she caught herself wondering. Yes, she had seen it beforehand, more or less. But she had seen other things as well: he had developed unevenly, unexpectedly, if logically. There had been common tastes--which grew obsolete or secondary. As the momentum of what she believed and hoped of him ran down with them both, he crystallized into the man he was, and no doubt virtually had always been. It was bad enough to have to ask for money, but to have it counted out to you, to be questioned about it like a child, was worse. "I don't understand," she said in the first months of their marriage. "Are you afraid I won't be judicious, responsible? Mightn't you try before judging?" "Judicious? Responsible?" He pinched her cheek. (Judith was five feet nine and sweetly sober of mien.) "There are no feminines or diminutives of those words, my dear." She stepped back. "But with more freedom I could manage better, Sam." "Manage?"--jocularly. "That _is_ your long suit, isn't it? You feel equal to managing all of us? Could even give me pointers on the business, eh?" "Why not?" she asked, quietly. Sam, feet apart, hands in pockets, looked her over with the smile one has for a dignified kitten. "I won't trouble you, my dear. I manage this family." With his pleasantries a lower note struck--and jangled. "But that isn't the point. I want--" "Really? You always do. Don't bother to tell me what. If you got this you'd be wanting something else, so what's the use of the expense merely to change the object?" He chuckled at her baffled silence. "I can't answer when you're like that. But--but, Sam! It isn't fair!" Still she supposed that relevant. However, money was not the chief thing. He could manage. Let it go. Having properly impressed her, nothing made Sam feel larger than to bring her a set of pearl-handled knives,--when she had wanted a dollar for kitchen tins. His extravagances were not always generosities. Once, after she had turned her winter-before-last suit and patched new seats into the boy's flannel drawers, because "times were hard," he bought a brace of blooded hunting-dogs. Next day she opened an account at a department store. With the promptness of the first of the month and the sureness of death, the bill came. Sam had expressed himself unchecked before she turned in the doorway. "If you will go over it," she said, with all her rehearsal unable, after all, to imitate his nonchalance, "you will find nothing unnecessary. I think there is nothing there for the dogs." But her cannon-ball affected him no more than a leaf an elephant; he did not know he was hit. It was always so.