“Never you let a man feel set down when you want him to see a thing reasonable, Ann,” she had said. “You never get on with them if you do. They can't stand it. The Almighty seemed to make 'em that way. They've always been masters, and it don't hurt any woman to let 'em be, if she can help 'em to think reasonable. Just you make a man feel comfortable in his mind and push him the reasonable way. But never you shove him, Ann. If you do, he'll just get all upset-like. Me and your father have been right-down happy together, but we never should have been if I hadn't thought that out before we was married two weeks. Perhaps it's the Almighty's will, though I never was as sure of the Almighty's way of thinking as some are.” Of course Tembarom felt soothed and encouraged, though he belonged to the male development which is not automatically infuriated at a suspicion of female readiness of logic. “Well, I might have got on to it in time,” he answered, still trying not to look affectionate, “but I've no time to spare. Gee! but I'm glad you're here!” “I sha'n't be here very long.” There was a shade of patient regret in her voice. “Father's got tired of trying America. He's been disappointed too often. He's going back to England.” “Back to England!” Tembarom cried out forlornly, “Oh Lord! What shall we all do without you, Ann?” “You'll do as you did before we came,” said Little Ann. “No, we sha'n't. We can't. I can't anyhow.” He actually got up from his chair and began to walk about, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets. Little Ann began to put her first stitches into a red B. No human being could have told what she thought. “We mustn't waste time talking about that,” she said. “Let us talk about the page. There are dressmakers, you know. If you could make friends with a dressmaker or two they'd tell you what the wedding things were really made of. Women do like their clothes to be described right.” CHAPTER III His work upon the page began the following week. When the first morning of his campaign opened with a tumultuous blizzard, Jim Bowles and Julius Steinberger privately sympathized with him as they dressed in company, but they heard him whistling in his own hall bedroom as he put on his clothes, and to none of the three did it occur that time could be lost because the weather was inhuman. Blinding snow was being whirled through the air by a wind which had bellowed across the bay, and torn its way howling through the streets, maltreating people as it went, snatching their breath out of them, and leaving them gaspingly clutching at hats and bending their bodies before it. Street-cars went by loaded from front to back platform, and were forced from want of room to whizz heartlessly by groups waiting anxiously at street corners. Tembarom saw two or three of them pass in this way, leaving the waiting ones desperately huddled together behind them. He braced himself and whistled louder as he buttoned his celluloid collar.