Just at present Mr. Sewell was taking two morning papers: the _Advertiser_ which he had always taken, and a cheap little one-cent paper, which had just been started, and which he had subscribed for experimentally, with the vague impression that he ought to encourage the young men who had established it. He did not like it very well. It was made up somewhat upon the Western ideal, and dealt with local matters in a manner that was at once a little more lively and a little more intimate than he had been used to. But before he had quite made up his mind to stop it, his wife had come to like it on that very account. She said it was interesting. On this point she used her conscience a little less actively than usual, and he had to make her observe that to be interesting was not the whole duty of journalism. It had become a matter of personal pride with them respectively to attack and defend _The Sunrise_, as I shall call the little sheet, though that was not the name; and Mr. Sewell had lately made some gain through the character of the police reports, which _The Sunrise_ had been developing into a feature. It was not that offensive matters were introduced; the worst cases were in fact rather blinked, but Sewell insisted that the tone of flippant gaiety with which many facts, so serious, so tragic for their perpetrators and victims, were treated was odious. He objected to the court being called a Mill, and prisoners Grists, and the procedure Grinding; he objected to the familiar name of Uncle for the worthy gentleman to whose care certain offenders were confided on probation. He now read that department of _The Sunrise_ the first thing every morning, in the hope of finding something with which to put Mrs. Sewell hopelessly in the wrong, but this morning a heading in the foreign news of the _Advertiser_ caught his eye, and he laid _The Sunrise_ aside to read at the breakfast-table. His wife came down in a cotton dress, as a tribute to the continued warmth of the weather, and said that she had not called the children, because it was Saturday, and they might as well have their sleep out. He liked to see her in that dress; it had a leafy rustling that was pleasant to his ear, and as she looked into the library he gaily put out his hand, which she took, and suffered herself to be drawn toward him. Then she gave him a kiss, somewhat less business-like and preoccupied than usual. “Well, you've got Lemuel Barker off your mind at last,” she divined, in recognition of her husband's cheerfulness. “Yes, he's off,” admitted Sewell. “I hope he'll stay in Willoughby Pastures after this. Of course it puts an end to our going there next summer.” “Oh, I don't know,” Sewell feebly demurred. “_I_ do,” said his wife, but not despising his insincerity enough to insist that he did also. The mellow note of an apostle's bell--the gift of an aesthetic parishioner--came from below, and she said, “Well, there's breakfast, David,” and went before him down the stairs.