"The whole house strikes me as very well arranged," I retorted, in a bluff tone, as much as to say that I saw through her blandishments. I think she appreciated this. Nevertheless, a few minutes later when we were on the dining-room story, she rubbed her head against my shoulder and said, "Just see what a love of a pantry, Fred. Mine is a hole compared to it. Servants in a house like this would never leave one. And do look at this ceiling. It is simple, but divinely clean and appropriate." "It is well enough," said I, coldly. After indulging in various other raptures, to which I seemed to turn a deaf ear, and examining everything to her heart's discontent, Josephine moved toward the front door with a sigh. Then it was that I remarked: "So the house suits you, my dear?" "It is ideal," she murmured, "simply ideal." "There are things about it which I don't fancy altogether," said I. "Oh, Fred, if we only had a house like it, I should be perfectly satisfied." "Should you? It is yours," I answered. "Don't be unkind, Fred." "It is yours," I repeated, a little more explicitly. Josephine devoured me with inquiring eyes. As she gazed, the expression of my countenance brought the blood to her cheeks and she cried with the plaintiveness of a wounded animal, "What do you mean, dear? It is cruel of you to make sport of me." "I am not making sport of you, Josephine. The house is yours--ours. I bought it yesterday. Here is the deed, if you mistrust me," I continued, solemnly drawing from my pocket the document in question. Josephine took it like one dazed. She looked from me to it and back again from it to me, then with a joyous laugh she exclaimed, "Really? It is really true? Oh, Fred, you are an angel!" "No, my dear," I answered, as she flung her arms about my neck--for she does so still once in a while--"I am merely a philosopher who has learned to recognize that what must be must be." My wife was too much absorbed in her own mysterious mental processes to take note of or analyze this observation. For a few moments she was lost in a brown study, and gazed about her with a glance that struck me as somewhat critical. "You are an angel, Fred," she repeated, ruminantly. "You took me in splendidly, didn't you? And to think of your doing it all by yourself!"