She turned to her husband: “What were you talking about when I came in?” “When you came in?” “Yes. You both had that look--I can always tell it--of having suddenly stopped.” “Oh!” said Sewell, pretending to arrange the things on his desk. “Evans had been suggesting the subject for a sermon.” He paused a moment, and then he continued hardily, “And he'd been telling me about--Barker. He's turned up again.” “Of course!” said Mrs. Sewell. “What's happened to him now?” “Nothing, apparently, but some repeated strokes of prosperity. He has become clerk, elevator-boy, and head-waiter at the St. Albans.” “And what are you going to do about him?” “Evans advises me to do nothing.” “Well, that's sensible, at any rate,” said Mrs. Sewell. “I really think you've done quite enough, David, and now he can be left to manage for himself, especially as he seems to be doing well.” “Oh, he's doing as well as I could hope, and better. But I'm not sure that I shouldn't have personally preferred a continued course of calamity for him. I shall never be quite at peace about him till I get him back on his farm at Willoughby Pastures.” “Well, that you will never do; and you may as well rest easy about it.” “I don't know as to never doing it,” said Sewell. “All prosperity, especially the prosperity connected with Mrs. Harmon's hotel, is transitory; and I may succeed yet.” “Does everything go on there in the old way, does Mr. Evans say?” Mrs. Sewell did not refer to any former knowledge of the St. Albans, but to a remote acquaintance with the character and methods of Mrs. Harmon, with whom the Sewells had once boarded. She was then freshly widowed by the loss of her first husband, and had launched her earliest boarding-house on that sea of disaster, where she had buoyantly outridden every storm and had floated triumphantly on the top of every ingulfing wave. They recalled the difficult navigation of that primitive craft, in which each of the boarders had taken a hand at the helm, and their reminiscences of her financial embarrassments were mixed with those of the unfailing serenity that seemed not to know defeat, and with fond memories of her goodness of heart, and her ideal devotion in any case of sickness or trouble. “I should think the prosperity of Mrs. Harmon would convince the most negative of agnostics that there was an overruling Providence, if nothing else did,” said Sewell. “It's so defiant of all law, so delightfully independent of causation.” “Well, let Barker alone with her, then,” said his wife, rising to leave him to the hours of late reading which she had never been able to break up. XVIII.