“Yes, I’m sure he will,” said Mrs. Lalor, in a tone that guaranteed it. “But I want to ask you, Mr. Laurence”—her face became suddenly fixed and expressionless—“in seeing that you get the evidence you want, my husband will not be—_prominent_ in any way?” “His name need not appear at all,” said Laurence promptly. His arm hovered spasmodically near her as she went slipping and lurching alternately beside him—“_Take_ care! You’d better not walk any farther.” “Oh, I have to go as far as Harner’s to order a ton of furnace coal.” “I’ll stop and order it for you, if that’s all,” said Mr. Laurence. His eyes, lightly comprehensive, took note of the clock in the church tower. “I’ve got a good five minutes before my train. You go straight home, Mrs. Lalor.” He looked down protectingly to meet her upward gaze, which was relieved and coquettish and yet, somehow, a little sad, as she answered: “Well, if you will——! I never do anything for myself if there’s a gentleman to do it for me.” He raised his hat before starting on, and when he looked back she waved her hand to him. The large advancing figure of Mrs. Stone—on her way home from wresting the early chop from the butcher—amply furred and heavily goloshed, her beaver hat as well as her face swathed in a thick, brown veil, threw into high relief the tawdry lightness of Mrs. Lalor’s attire. He recollected that if he ever objected to a thin jacket on his wife she invariably professed to be “warm underneath.” Mrs. Lalor might also be warm underneath, but he had a masculine preference for having people _look_ warm in winter-time. Poor little woman! He shook his head as he thought of Lalor, with a quick compression of his lips. Then a long whistle from up the track sent him tearing ahead in the teeth of the wind, to thrust his head at last inside of Harner’s office and call out: “Send a ton of furnace coal to Mrs. Lalor, 36 Herkimer Street, and be quick about it,” before settling down into that swift run back that carried him swinging up by the guard rail onto the slippery steps of the last car, and out into that region where women and household matters are not. The first thing Mrs. Laurence said when she came in at lunch time, after a morning spent abroad, was: “How freezing cold this house is! Hasn’t the coal come yet, Teresa?” “No, ma’am.” “How provoking!” Mrs. Laurence stopped short in disgust. “I never saw such a place; it’s as much as your life’s worth to get anything delivered when you want it. Is that Timothy I hear in the cellar now?” Timothy was the furnace man of the Ridge. “Tell him not to let the fire go entirely out; we’ll have to manage it some way. If he comes back between two and three the coal will certainly be here then.”